When you’ve been in the advertising/design business for a few decades you’ve heard it all when it comes to client/project requests. From “I need a logo in less than an hour” to “do you charge for your work?”. We appreciate and respect all clients and do our very best to make everyone happy. But as you know, that’s not always possible, especially when a request or expectation is not reasonable.
The advent of Apple’s MacIntosh computers and the dizzying number of software programs and social media outlets have dramatically changed expectation levels for our industry over the last two decades. Both from clients and insiders. We went from, “I’ll get this brochure designed and laid out this week” to “I can have this brochure/web ad campaign/website/email blast/etc., done before lunch”. But the increased speed and outreach opportunities rarely means better quality or a cheaper price. That’s why the old adage, “Do you want it cheap, fast or good? Pick two”, applies to our industry as it does for almost every other industry or business.
Often a client will want a project super-fast and super-cheap. We can do that, but it’s not going to be good. We don’t like producing poor quality work—ever. There’s no economical way to compress the turnaround time and the cost and still produce a good design or product.
Sometimes a client will want a project to be really good and really fast. Welllllll… that’s gonna cost ya. When we get all hands on-deck and crank out a project really fast and really good — we gotta charge a premium for that.
And then, sometimes a client wants a project to be really good and really cheap — that’s not going to be done quickly. Other projects will take precedent and we’ll need to get to it when we can get to it.
You get the point. Like anything else worth doing, it’s worth doing right and we certainly understand as an ad agency focused on web, print, and video we are often the last option to get a project done. But, we encourage our clients to plan ahead, consider the obstacles in the process, and whatever amount of time and money you think it’s going to cost — double it! Just kidding… but not really.
We love what we do and our portfolio and client relationships mean everything to us. We seek to make every client happy, but as a design professor once said in class, “advertising ain’t science”, we realize there are plenty of opportunities for failure. Our job is to use our training, experience and caring to ensure every project gets done on-time, within budget and provides an effective creative solution for our clients.
If you need your advertising, marketing, design, video or web project done cheap, fast, and good — please contact us and we’ll both pick two!