I have a friend who owns a restaurant business. He does all his own marketing and advertising… and he’s quite good at it.  It’s really fascinating to see what he comes up with and how tightly bound it is to his objectives and his brand.  Part of the fascination is of how rare he is. Most small business owners can’t do what he does. Why? Because few people have the same level of creativity, humor and understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

I’m not going to say that every business should hand off every aspect of their marketing to an agency or consultant.  In fact, I think too many businesses live in the extremes on this issue. Either they do it all themselves or they hand it all over to a third party.  In almost every case, I think this is a mistake.

Turn on your TV or tune into your radio and you don’t have to wait long to encounter an advertising train wreck.  You know what I’m talking about. The ads you know are horrible, but you can’t take your eyes off them. Most of these are cases where the advertiser is working directly with a station or a production service, without the advice of a professional.  Some are cases of creativity gone awry as an agency has taken too many liberties with the client’s message and have lost the integrity of the brand which my restaurateur buddy manages so well.

Business Week had a recent article which did a great job of bringing light to this issue entitled Why Your Advertising Isn’t Working.  In this article, Steve McKee does an excellent job of hitting seven of the greatest infractions in advertising.

Here are the top 3:

1. It’s boring. Yep, boring. Why do we watch TV, listen to the radio, read the newspaper, or go online? Three reasons: information, entertainment, and engagement. Ads that fail to offer at least two of these three benefits flop. Just as nobody reads every story in the newspaper, nobody pays attention to every ad. You have to engage your prospects with something that is interesting or entertaining before they’ll give you their valuable time and attention. Creativity has always been the coin of the realm, but in our time-starved culture it’s truer than ever.

2. It’s boorish. You shouldn’t think of your advertising as being about your brand, you should think of it as an extension of your brand (see “A Practical Guide to Branding”). If it’s loud, annoying, insulting, offensive, or self-centered, people will think the same of your products or services (see “The Cocktail Party Test for Advertising”). Remember the first sentence in the best-selling hardback book in U.S. history, The Purpose Driven Life: “It’s not about you.” What’s true in life is true in advertising; if you focus only on what you can get, you’re not going to get much. Instead, focus on giving, and good things will begin to happen.

3. It’s safe. The first time I saw a Ford Taurus (F), I took note, and I suspect you did as well. So did a lot of other people, and the Taurus went on to become the best-selling car in America. If the Taurus had been another in a long line of boxy sedans, it probably would have been just another car. Instead, it turned automotive design conventions upside down and made history. While being different isn’t in and of itself a guarantee of success, what you do is a lot more likely to get noticed if it hasn’t been done before. And keep in mind that when you do something different, people may not like it—at least initially. Most of us were shocked at our first sight of the Taurus’ curved lines, but it went on to have significant influence on automotive design. If you worry too much about offending someone, you’re likely to not attract anyone.

See the rest here.

Whether companies work with agencies or not, they still may fall into these traps.  It’s just a whole lot easier to fall into them if you don’t have a guide.  Choose wisely.