The "Make your mistakes visible" advice seems to have merit based on the offered axion: "Telling the truth even when you don’t have to is good evidence that you’re trustworthy."

But I can't think of any marketeers that have taken this advice. I wonder how effective it would be if Microsoft ran a campaign saying: "although we enabled user account control by default to increase security, we admit that it came across as 'chatty and annoying' for most users."

Such a strategy may be especially useful to reduce impact of a competitor using a mistake in negative marketing.