Sweden

"Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations are a forward-thinking, bleeding edge, technologically sophisticated, client-driven, buzzword-blogospheric transnational corporation," said Jeremy Diseased-Rat, CEO and visionary.  The board-members leaned back in their comfortable leather chairs, each squeaking and making little fart-noises in their own individual ways, and closed their eyes, ready to fall asleep while Jeremy talked.  The shareholder representatives, sat on less-comfortable but nonetheless plush chairs, tried to look attentive, as they effectively formed the front row of Jeremy's audience.  Three secretaries who'd won an office competition that they'd all been trying to lose, sat next to the buffet table on little bar-stools, quietly eating to make up for having to sit through Jeremy's presentation.  And in hard, wooden, school-room chairs were a collection of mid-level managers from firms that employed Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations to provide them with marketing advice, consulting strategies, and the occasional high-powered legal counsel to get them out of jurisdictional difficulties.
"Question!" snapped a tall man whose shirt didn't seem to fit him.  His collar and cuffs were too tight, making his face and wrists purple with trapped blood, while his waist was far too slender and let his shirt constantly escape his trousers.  Jeremy Diseased-Rat stared at him in perplexity.  He wasn't used to audience participation.  The man took his silence as an invitation to continue.
"Question, Sir!  Is it true that you intend to present the American Presidency to the National American Society of Hipsters, and if so, do you feel that there is anything unethical about a non-American firm controlling access to the leadership of America?"
"We're not unAmerican," said Jeremy immediately, his deep voice rolling over the room like a Sherman tank.  "We have four hundred Americans working for us, we pay taxes in America both as a corporate obligation and as a voluntary matter, and we make campaign donations to select political causes to further the political caucus."
"But you, Sir, are not American, are you?  And you are the titular head of your company?"
"Who are you calling a tit?"  Jeremy was very sensitive to insults, not least because of his unfortunate, but ancient, surname.  "Look, I'm not American but the company is registered in America and has done business both there and with American firms for the last five years.  It would be scurrilous to suggest that we were in any way antagonistic to America's prospects."
"Yet you're proposing to give the American Presidency to NASH, Sir!"
"So?"  As arguments went this could only be called weak, yet it seemed to stymie his questioner.
"So they're hipsters, man!"
"That's not an argument," said Jeremy, now on safer ground.  He'd been debating champion at both college and the Toastmasters for six years each.  "If anything, I suspect it's ad hominem.  A hipster can be President of the United States of America, there's nothing in the Constitution that forbids it.  And it's a uniquely American outlook on life, nowhere else is there sufficient wealth and education to create a social class that disdains itself for it achievements, derises its parentage for allowing it to exist, and attempts to raise a generation of children unfit for anything except parasitism.  It's the next evolutionary level and if it succeeds in cuckooing the rest of America into raising its worthless progeny then it's proven itself to a worthy heir to America's future.  Why shouldn't a hipster run America?  Why shouldn't someone who thinks education is worthless pay the teachers what they believe they're worth?  Either the hipster is right and the system will fall apart regardless, or the teacher is right and the system can only improve.  It's a win-win situation for everyone."
"Not for Americans, Sir!"
"Absolutely for Americans, Sir!  It'll open their eyes to the emptiness of their hearts and the hollow promise of their religious books."
"That sounds like blasphemy!"
"That sounds like someone who doesn't have a sensible argument.  You can only blaspheme if you believe in the religion you're attacking in the first place and Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations believes in all religions and none simultaneously."
"You seem to have an answer for everything," said the man, his face now shading into blue.
"That is why you pay us," said Jeremy Diseased-Rat.  "You do pay us, don't you?"
"We will be doing very soon," said the man.
"Oh?  What will you be hiring us for?"
"We'd like political control of Sweden, please."

A little light marketing after brunch

The offices of Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations were housed in a modernist steel-and-glass construction that stood on the site of a four-hundred year old house.  They'd had to obtain special permission to demolish the house, and had ended up paying to have it vandalised first when English Heritage had looked ready to step in.  Their CEO had been quoted in the papers about the event.
"Well blast it all, we wouldn't have had any of these problems if this had been America!" he'd said to the reporter.
"Ah yes," said the reporter.  "They don't have any buildings 400 years old in America though."
"Exactly!  There's a culture that knows how to renew things regularly!"
Those particular interviews were carefully kept absent from the book of cuttings and other publicity that the firm had managed to obtain.
The building towered over the surrounding houses and small shops.  The row it was on had originally been factory houses built early in the Industrial revolution and subdivided ever since, until modern day residents boasted about their cupboard-sized kitchens and bathrooms not actually big enough to fit a bath in, even stood up on end.  Minguy, looking out of a tinted glass window that occupied the entire wall, liked to stare down at the rooves below and fantasize about pushing his office safe out of the window to see if it would crash all the way through the ground.  He thought it might.
"Minguy!"  He turned lightly on the balls of his feet and saw that Jeronica was stood just outside his office clutching a vase of pussy-willow stems.  He smiled, the exact smile that he practised every evening in front of the mirror for fifteen minutes until it felt like it was part of him, and beckoned her on in.  She wobbled a little as she walked over, and he realised that she was now eight inches taller than him.
"New heels," she said as she got close enough for him to be able to hear her without her having to shout.  "A little gift from Leshoutier for getting their adverts shown in Dubai.  There's something waiting for you in reception too."
Minguy smiled a little wider, feeling the corners of his mouth tear slightly.  He dipped his hand into the pocket on his waistcoat for some vaseline to rub on them.  "They make you tall," he said, tilting his head back slightly so he could make eye-contact with her.  "Intimidatingly so."
"Yes," she said, tossing her hair back over her head.  Immediately two heavily-styled locks fell back to obscure her vision and give the impression of a scared young girl peering out at him.  He thought it was creepy, but expensively so.  "Yes, and not all of our doorways are tall enough."
"You won't be wearing them around the office much then?"
"What?"  Jeronica looked at him as though he'd suggested she wear viscose.  "I've spoken to Jack, he's going to get another three inches clearance for the doors.  I've also given Ozwald a call and told him to design me something that won't look like ankle support but actually is, and I've called Scholl and told them I'm going to need a whole lot better toe care and aggressive foot therapy."
Minguy nodded, this was pretty much what he expected from Jeronica.
"Anyway," she said, "Leshoutier has sent you something too, and reception swear that there's no airholes in the box this time, and it's not been barking, or trying to move by itself, so there's probably no hurry on this one.  And when you have a minute, the National American Society of Hipsters are looking to hire us."
"What do NASH want?"  Minguy let genuine interest creep into his voice.  NASH had only managed to organise properly in recent months, mostly as a response to what they saw as a direct attack on their core beliefs and everyone else saw as justified mockery.  Much to his (and his research assistant's) surprise they'd attracted substantial funding and membership.  It seemed like there'd been little pockets of hipsters scattered around everywhere just waiting for the chance to find like minds and start doing things together.  Their Facebook page had been an absolute success, with all the hipsters firmly disliking it instantly and then rushing to change their opinion once it was so uncool that liking it was the only cool thing to do.  While the group oscillated wildly out of control and newspapers made sardonic comments on irony the members had somehow managed to come together, form a coalition and a society, and now had a grand building somewhere in Manhattan where they looked down condescendingly on the rest of America.
"The Presidency," said Jeronica.  "They've figured out that the primaries are just ways for special interest groups to get the right candidates in front of the electorate and that the final election is about as fair as coal.  Rumour has it they have a hipster on the Supreme Court already, so they can take the Presidency so long as they get a candidate up there."
"Which one?"
"Well, there's the problem," said Jeronica, but Minguy interrupted her.
"No, I meant which Supreme Court Judge?  The little one?"
"Eff knows," said Jeronica breezily.  "It doesn't matter at the moment, the problem we're going to have is that they want a President only a hipster would vote for.  Someone who's not cool and no-one else would vote for."
"Ha!" said Minguy.  "That figures.  But then how could such a person get elected?"
"That's another problem they want us to solve."
"Hmm.  What do you think?"
"I think it's a challenge," said Jeronica, carefully.  "And having the group that picked the American President a happy client is certainly something to consider.  I think we need to think long and hard before we say either yes or no to this.  And finding a suitable candidate is a significant problem."
"Maybe not," said Minguy.  "Don't we still know that woman who sells suicide-ducks?"
"Marlene?  Straps mines to the underside of ducks and sets them loose in kiddie-parks?"
"Yes, she's the one.  She's American, isn't she?  And not in jail?"
"Yet."
"Well then, I think we have options!  Let's go market, Jeronica dear."

Wishlist

It was an obvious product enhancement.  Anyone could have seen it, anyone would have done it.  I just got there first, that's all.
There were a number of shopping sites that were popular enough to allow you to create wish-lists that other people could see.  It let your friends and family know what you might like for your birthday, it let your friends and family see your wedding registry all from one site, it even let your enemies and exes know what you were getting and be annoyed about it.  But it made things a little bit easier, for some people at least, and that was a product enhancement.  It was just the right way to merchandise the site a little better.
My first suggestion was just that we separate wedding registry and wish-lists.  "Make them separate," I said, "and people can put the expensive stuff they want from people they never see on one list, and they can put the cheap stuff they'd really love on the list to share with the people who mean the most to them."
"Like who?" asked Brent across the table.  His roseacea was particularly bad that day.
"Like no-one," I said, going for honesty.  "That'll be where they keep the things they really want and don't want anyone to know about."
"But we'll know," he said, his face wrinkling in puzzlement, like a shah-pei's.
"Yes," I said, "and we can market to them based on their secret desires.  We can recommend leather clothes, soft Japanese ropes and unusual intimate jewellery alongside the usual cookie-cutters and books."
We went ahead and split the lists, and it was successful.  Brent wasn't happy, as I got a bonus that quarter and he didn't, but then I checked his own recommendations and realised that he must have a very strange wish-list indeed.
If I'd stopped there, it might have been ok.  Just maybe.
"Well," I said at the next meeting.  "I was thinking, why have just two lists?  Why not let people create their own lists?  Let them create a Secret Santa list to be shared by the office, let them create a Nerf-arsenal list to be shared by the whole civil-war reenactment club, und so weiter?"
"What was that last bit?" asked Brent.  His fingernails were black from where he'd shut his hand in his garage door that morning.
"It was German," I said smugly.  I'd read it in a magazine the previous evening.
"I think they pronounce their w's as v's," he said, sounding disinterested.  I blushed, knowing he'd won a point over me, and realised I had to try and claw the advantage back.
"We use the existing list technology," I said quickly, "and just give it editable names and a sharing list.  Then we'll keep an eye on common names for lists and we'll automatically create lists of those types to inspire people."
By itself, it wasn't a bad idea.  It really wasn't.
"The new lists are working well," said Brent, reading from a forty-eight page report.  He'd lost two fingers to frostbite over Christmas and I didn't like looking at his hands any more.  "But there are a few worrying trends, and I don't think we should be allowing autogeneration of popular list types any more."
"Why's that?"  Kevin, Head Honcho for Marketing, was growing a moustache and it was turning out patchy.  He was compensating by trying to seem dynamic.
"We had to remove a 'People I'd like to F-word" list already, said Brent.  I sniggered, but quietly and behind my hand.  "We also had to remove an 'Outed sex offenders list' too.  There's a little too much flexibility in the lists, they can seriously infringe on our policies."
"I agree with Brent," said Geraldine, who represented Legal.  "We could get into some serious trouble with some of these lists.  We should probably put an age-restriction on creating a list too, so there's no more 'We hate Brent Conmurty' lists either."
Brent looked stricken, apparently he'd not known about the list.  I was relieved that I'd got my sister to create it using her daughter's boyfriend's account.
If I only left it there.  If only I'd not risen to the bait.
I went home that evening determined to get a little more revenge on Brent done.  I wasn't sure what I wanted any more, or why revenge was important, but it was fun and I got a little bored in the evenings before I opened the wine.  I put his name on my 'To Hit' list and then went off and got drunk.
I was woken at three am by the pinging of my cell-phone.  I'd fallen asleep on the toilet after throwing up my knees, as far as I could tell.  My head hurt, so I peered at my phone, hoping it would be telling me how to feel better.
Saw the addition to your hit list, read the text.  Ran Brent Conmurty down on the Haversham road two hours ago.  He's so much roadkill now!
I threw up again.  How the hell had I mixed up my 'to-hit' list and my 'hit' list?  And where had a 'hit list' come from anyway?
The cold memory of Brent in the meeting, when he was still alive, saying that autogeneration was dangerous reared its ugly head.
My phone pinged again.
Bonus: I got his parents too; house has been petrol bombed into a ruin!