Could you imagine if the CEO of Ford, in wanting to save money, asked someone he met at a wedding (because this person mentioned they like to draw) to design some forward-thinking cars? (Wait, this isn’t a good example because I think that is what Ford actually does).  I run across scenarios far too often where a larger company handles their creative projects like they are in a high-school art class.  Actually, come to think of it, I’d prefer high-schoolers working on a project for me versus some of the clients I’m speaking of.

Companies will spend millions of dollars, or hundreds of millions of dollars or more, in a blink of an eye for legal costs, physical products, contruction costs, equipment and various other goods.  Yet, when it comes to representing their own company within the Marketing realm, there attitude goes from ‘let the experts take care of it’, to ‘hmmm, maybe Sarah in Human Resources can take this on, after all - she said she took a couple art classes in college’.

I am sometimes asked why I don’t do certain things myself, ie. Why I didn’t do my backyard? or paint my house? or lay a wood floor..etc.  My answer is always the same.  It’s because there is someone else (service provider) that can:

a. Complete the task in much less time that I can
b. Do it much better than I can do it
c. Time is money

Now I know every man must have his cave (ie. Men are from Mars) and there is certainly nothing wrong with a man working on this car, saving money by installing a carpet, a husband/wife painting their house or the wife tackling various projects around the house to save money.  But why...why!..for the love of Jakob Neilsen, do supposed ‘businessmen’ (people) try to do bring things in-house when they should absolutely be hiring a professional to do it?

As a business person you learn very quickly that the overused saying “time is money” is actually very true, and I’d much rather spend my ‘extra’ time with my wife and kids. Again, this is not to disrespect anyone who wants to take on their own projects because this can be a great thing for a number of reasons, but for love of God’s green earth - let a professional do it - not your cousin damnit!

I personally learned this lesson when I was building applications myself so I could maintain control over projects and such.  I went about as far as I could until reality slapped me in the face and I finally realized that there were a lot of developers much better than myself who could build code much more quickly and efficiently than I could.  In the end, I preferred to pay a developer say 25 hours worth of work, versus taking 50 hours to do it myself.

In the end, it really boils down to common sense.  There are far too many companies who do not understand the value of properly marketing their company and committing a budget for this purpose.  If you are a developer or agency and sense this, you need to think twice before engaging this prospective client as this is one of many warning signs to be on the lookout for.