I brought up the subject of raising our profile with her majesty our MD the other day. She gave the subject her full attention, for five seconds. Her response was, “Where’s the money in it?” Which is a depressing attitude towards PR from a PR agency MD!

She then asked if I wanted to "take it on as a project?"

I assume she meant the type of project with no extra pay, the sort you do after you've done all your other work, probably at the weekend and one where you will get no thanks. With that in mind, I politely declined.

That said, our efforts to market ourselves are woeful. The website isn't so much retro, but stone age. And the creds, oh my God the creds! I was presenting them the other day to some know-all marketing manager and he mentioned that one of the companies on the "previous experience" slide had gone out of business three years ago. Oops!

But, to be fair, we’re not the only agency that can’t be arsed to publicise ourselves properly. I have done a quick scout of some other agency efforts and was amazed at how shoddy theirs can be too. Here are a few observations:

• Old-fashioned and clunky graphics. Some of them look like they were designed at least ten years ago.
  
• Intros that lasted FOREVER. Doesn’t everyone just press “skip intro” straight away?
  
• Copy that sends you to sleep, with far too much jargon and tired adjectives. Repeat after me: “Integrated, strategic, dynamic …”
  
• Typos and bad grammar. If I noticed it, it must have been terrible.
  
• Rubbish contact details. You want to be able to contact the MD and senior directors directly, not have to go to a general info mail address first.
  
• A blog where the last entry was in 2010. I'm not joking. I wish I could include the link but it seems a bit inappropriate.
  
• Stock images. Some of the most extraordinarily awful examples of these corny images I've ever seen.
  
• White papers. I shudder to think of the number of these lying unread on PR agency websites. I'd wager more people read these soulless reports internally, than externally.