I have to agree with you: the result cannot be blamed on the programmers alone. What I saw was a cultural mismatch, all the way from the control of the requirements to the selection of personnel. Making an ad is not the same as making a web application, the attributes of a good writer or artists are not what define a good programmer. I have successfully introduced a measure of sanity in two agencies I worked for, with great results (I really love making people's lives better), but that's not the whole market.

Yet, I can understand a bit of this mindset. Far too many websites are to be discarded by the end of the campaign. When so many products are supposed to last a month or so, people often forget about how sausages should be made.