Whip it out.

The next time a client asks you to do something crass, ugly or hyperbolic, whip out this slide show appended to a BusinessWeek article I just happened upon. Here's the link to the article:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_28/b4042050.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story

And a link to the slide-show.
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/06/0628_reputation/index_01.htm

The article is called What Price Reputation? In a nutshell it claims Advertising can boost a company's reputation (especially if the company concerned backs things up with deeds) and thus its stock price. For instance, if Wal-Mart had the reputation of Target, it's stock value would rise an estimated 4.9%, boosting its value by nearly $10 billion. That's a lot of simoleans. At Ogilvy some years back, the Agency was quick to trumpet the $50 Billion increase in IBM's market cap as the result of the brand's resurrected reputation. This makes sense to me. A sandwich shop you like can charge fifty cents more for that corned-beef on rye and get away with it. (See Starbucks.)

Companies that force you do crappy work because "that will drive sales," are once again, sacrificing real value for specious short-term gains. Don't let a client screw itself in the temporal pursuit of marketing mammon.

Whip it out and fight.