When your marketing firm has bad ads

Hi all,

In Austin this weekend with the lovely Ms. Carolyn Goodwin. So far, it's been a perfect weekend --- too much food, too much wine, and too much sleep. Perfect.

At one part during the weekend, Carolyn's mom showed us an ad for a marketing firm in The Woodlands. "Have you heard of them?" Neither Carolyn nor I were familiar with the company (who shall remain nameless) but within 5 seconds we were both grimacing. Why? The ad, for said marketing firm, was awful.

I always find it humorous when marketing or advertising companies boast generic logos, advertisements created in word, or (worst of all) websites reminiscent of 1999. Yikes. What are these companies thinking? Sure, the average person isn't going to know great design from good design, but bad design? Sorry to break it to you -- they know. And the worst part? An advertising company with bad marketing materials is like a surgeon marketing a recent malpractice suit, or a home builder publicly admitting that his homes have leaky roofs.

My current company is doing stuff the right way. We're in the process of reworking our website -- admittedly it's overdue -- but in the meantime we've resisted keeping our old, out-dated site up. Although not having a web site is risky, we recognize that having a BAD site up is far worst.

What do you think? Are you equally as repulsed by marketing and advertising companies whose design or writing leaves much to be desired? Or am I just overly critical?