For the answer, let’s examine a trend that’s practiced by an industry that should know better.

Agency websites. You’ve seen dozens of them, maybe hundreds. Some of them are pretty dang good, some are the digital equivalent of trying to cram 25 clowns into a Mini Cooper, and some of them are as forgettable as Ashton Kutcher’s latest movie.

But there’s a new breed I’ve seen popping up over the last few years, let’s call it the blog site. The first one I remember seeing was from a hip, smart offshoot of Fallon in Minneapolis. Instead of a typical website, they had a landing page with a gazillion links. Their work was on YouTube and Flickr, their “about us” section used Wikipedia and Facebook pages, and so on. It was very cool because 1) it was different; and 2) it immediately conveyed a command and understanding of the web and social media.

But then came the copycats.

If it’s true that there’s nothing so powerful as an original idea, it must also be true that nothing is so off-putting as a sea of imitations. With the possible exception of a litter box that hasn’t been emptied for three days.

It’s not just me, either. I was having lunch with a very successful creative director the other day who was whining about how he had to design yet another blog-like site. Now part of his beef was the functionality that this site needed to have, and that it was going to be a [many expletives deleted] WordPress site with Drupal so that people could follow the agency on Twitter, etc. But mainly he was just pissed that the core of the site was going to be the blog. And that his design work was going to be pretty much limited to the masthead, and the grouping of chicklet visuals on the left-hand nav that would suffice as the agency’s work section.

(I should add that he wasn’t all that PO’d, since the gig paid well, and he knows he’ll probably get to re-design the whole shebang when the fad wears off in a year or two.)

I think my buddy has a point. A great big, super-fine, extra-sharp one and that certainly is not limited to the agency business. I happened upon another such brand-spanking-new-blog-like website just a couple days ago. The logo is a re-design, and is quite nice. But 80% of the real estate on the home/main page is the company blog. And earth to company-who-shall-remain-nameless, your blog just isn’t that interesting. Not only that, there are countless others just like it — company websites that sacrifice their brand and diminish the importance of their products and services in favor of increasing searchable word density.

Here’s my point. Mega-star graphic designer Chip Kidd and countless other greater and lesser lights have made it their life’s labor to come up with book cover art that not only looks great, it actually enhances sales. Even (or especially) on an iPad — that book jacket art looks fantastic. Or cool, or dark, or mysterious, or seductive, or heroic, or delicious…depending on what’s inside the book.

Designing an agency website, or any company’s site for that matter, whose main feature is the company blog is like nixing the book cover and starting with the table of contents. It’s like a cake with no frosting, a Lamborghini with no engine, a Playboy with no centerfold. Etc., etc.

It’s an attempt to show a mastery of the interactive space, I get it. You have an RSS feed, you’ve done some iPhone apps, that’s nice. You’ll probably even win some business because there are still some companies out there who don’t know what a social media strategy is, they just know they need one.

The fact is all companies, not just agencies, need to be highly-selective and strategic about how they use technology to reach their customers. I know that’s a message from the Department of Duh, but every now and then you see some company who doesn’t quite get it. And I’m not just talking about Bob’s House of Turtles, either. There are plenty of Fortune 1000 companies with web pages that are a traffic jam of search-optimized copy, at the expense of using great design and a handful of carefully chosen words to make a point that sticks. Don’t be one of them.

As for the agencies, well, it’s like the great Bill Bernbach said: “If nobody notices your work, everything else is academic.”

So, agencies, design firms, and interactive shops—do more great work. Companies and businesses large and small—make more great stuff. And please, don’t be afraid to show it. Do something heroic and memorable. (Hint: it’s probably not your blog…unless you hire Dave Barry or Aaron Sorkin to write it.)

More people, possibly even millions of them, will buy your book if the cover is good enough.

Then again, I could be wrong. But I don’t think so.