“ Boston Duck Tours” is yet another private company, providing tours just in its namesake city and claiming to be “Boston’s most popular tour.” For instance, Original Wisconsin Ducks®, located in Wisconsin Dells, WI, bills itself as “the ONLY duck tour in the world in continuous operation since 1946.” Meanwhile, “ Ride the Ducks” offers duck boat tours in Branson, MO Seattle, WA Stone Mountain Park, GA, and Guam. It’s important to realize that one company does not own and operate all of the nation’s duck boats rather, several different firms run tours in select cities around the country. Also, in 2015, “ five college students were killed and more than 70 people injured when a duck boat veered into a charter bus on a bridge above Seattle's Lake Union.” In addition to Allie’s death, a woman fell backward from a duck boat in a parking lot in Boston in 2003, while taking a picture. ![]() The amphibious vehicles also have been responsible for several fatalities on land. In 2010 in Philadelphia, two tourists died when a tugboat pushed a barge into their stranded duck boat. Foreshadowing the Branson tragedy, thirteen people passed away in 1999 when a duck boat sank on a lake near Hot Springs, Arkansas. Over the past 19 years, 43 people have died in duck boat-related accidents. I wonder what a sharp student like Allie would have said about duck boats, not knowing that one would one day take her life, or that similar vessels would be responsible for the deaths of dozens of others. Today other marketing faculty and I use the Mindful Matrix with our classes to assess the marketing actions of organizations like Ride the Ducks. Mindful Marketing didn’t exist when Allie was a student. It’s hard to image the pain that those closest to such accident victims feel, having suddenly lost their brother or sister, husband or wife, daughter or son. I was Allie’s teacher for only a few months, but the latest Duck Boat accident has evoked thoughts of her untimely passing, returning sadness to me and others who knew her. She wore a warm smile and exuded charm that endeared her to others. I quickly learned that she was a bright and hard-working student, as well as a kind and compassionate person. Several years before, Allie had been a student in one of my marketing classes. Why remember an accident more than two years past that took a single life, when 17 people riding a duck boat on Table Rock Lake near Branson, Missouri drowned just a week ago? The reason is personal: I knew Allison Warmuth. A duck boat operator failed to see her stopped at a traffic signal and plowed into her scooter from behind. It was a sunny spring day, and 28-year-old Allison Warmuth was doing one of the things she enjoyed most-riding her red scooter through the streets of Boston.
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