Someone once said that intelligence is learning from your mistakes and wisdom is learning from the mistakes of others. And so I thank the good people at Sony, and their agency Zipatoni, for letting me learn from their flog misfortune. Flogs, otherwise known as fake blogs, have been getting a lot of brands in trouble recently. Sony and Zipatoni’s attempt at creating word of mouth with a flog, alliwantforxmasisapsp.com, didn't go the way they must have hoped. Word of mouth spreads quickly throughout the gaming world.It’s true that gamers like games, but they don’t like being gamed.

Ad Age columnist Noelle Weaver’s real blog offers four hard-learned lessons to all of us in the communications business from the misfortunes of Sony and Zipatoni. I'm sure they have the intelligence and we have the wisdom to learn from their mistakes.

1] Good advertising doesn't rely on tricking, lying to or deceiving your target audience.

2] The consumer is smarter than you think, alternative marketing tactics must be genuine, authentic and in today's world, transparent.

3] Today's interest in brand politics means that everything you do will come under scrutiny from someone. See number 2.

4] Involve your consumer in the brand conversation, give them the tools to do so and they will repay you four-fold.

Jeff