It's fun when you see major companies really begin to understand the nature and cultural ins ands outs of your particular subculture. Despite the fact that YouTube has grown over the last couple years and is a little large to be called a subculture, the majority of corporations out there wouldn't know what to do or where to begin if they saw something with the potential to turn into negative publicity surface on YouTube.

We're starting to see more companies that do, though, and Electronic Arts is one we can add to the list. A user took some video screen capture of a glitch in the Tiger Woods golf title from EA showing how the ball could be played by walking over a water hazard and swinging as if the pond were dry land.

The savvy folks at EA noticed the video, then produced and posted the following as a video response.

Tracking Twitter and running Google Alerts for negative press from the blogosphere and the general populace of the social media set is one thing, but if you want to live the Chinese cliche of turning danger into opportunity, this is the way to do it. EA has successfully navigated what could become a negative demerit amongst the hardcore fans of the game franchise into a widely talked about marketing move.

It's all about caring what your customers think and being smart about how you respond. All of us, myself included, can learn something here.