Great, fast, cheap: a recipe for predicting the advertising future

In a break from our scheduled programming of rage induced venting, I thought I’d share a little piece of wisdom once gently screamed at me by a creative director. Actually, he was more gently screaming it at a room that I happened to be in but either way it’s something that stuck and if god forbid anyone puts me in charge of an agency, it’d probably be the first thing I put on a wall somewhere.

The general rule of thumb is: if you want a piece of work that has two of the above qualities, you simply can’t have the third.

For example, cheap great work tends to take a lot of time because it requires fewer people to do more for less. Likewise, great fast work tends to take a fuck tonne of cash because you can’t build Rome in a day. Equally, fast cheap work doesn’t tend to be that great because, not dissimilar to wanking, if it comes easy, it’s not usually that satisfying.