I’ve worked within the bowels of advertising, and often taunt people who don’t push the envelope. So I naturally empathize with marketers who are stuck trying to defend ‘edgy’ creative work.

But there are some tactics that advertisers should never adopt, if only because they attract far too much negative attention. Here is my partial list of Ideas You Should Not Touch With A Ten-Foot Pole Even If Your Ad Agency Says So:

1. Take out a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal, and call it “An open letter to…”
This month in the WSJ, there was just such an ad by True Beginnings chairman Herb West, writing to Match.com chairman Barry Diller, saying “I will meet your challenges in the court room, if you insist; however I propose a more productive solution…” I can suggest one ‘more productive solution’ and it involves a measly $0.35. If only the ad agency could have told Mr. West to write a real letter to Mr. Diller. No artwork charges. No media commission (darn!) No public brawl.

2. Get too creative when selling drugs.
Paxil. Advertising.Type these two words in your search engine, and you’ll know what I mean. The Paxil TV commercial features people wearing name tags that conveniently extend the product segment –and the disorders– that Paxil is approved for.

3. Market cigarettes to kids.
You would have thought that tobacco companies would have learned something from the case of using of cartoons (that got Camel into hot water many years ago.) New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has ordered Brown & Williamson to halt the promotion of Kool Mixx packs featuring deejays and party scenes. They also used hip-hop music. A B&W spokesperson said this of the choice of music: “adult consumers do like hip-hop.” Yeah, right! And my 83 year-old dad listens to Cold Play.

4. Name calling on expensive TV spots.
Bud and Miller marketing has broken out into inane name calling. Bud calls Miller Lite the ‘queen of carbs’, because Miller named itself the ‘President of Beers’ –a swipe at the ‘King of Beers.’

What beer drinker would base his choice of a brand he would not drink on such stupid name calling? Bud also went on and on about Miller being owned by a South African Brewery. (Apparently it was aptly called the “Unleash the Dawgs” campaign!) The courts ordered them to stop, but they continued, through their famous spokes-lizards, to talk of the ‘foreign brewery’ connection.

This list can fill up rapidly. If you are interested in adding to it, please do. Email me with your suggestions and comments.