Are you seduced by the cheap and fast?

You can select only two of the following three types of service: good, cheap, fast.

It’s been making the rounds lately, although I first heard it from a graphic designer years ago. Basically, if you want something to be good and fast, it won’t be cheap. And if you want it to good and cheap, then it won’t be fast. And if you want cheap and fast, well then it surely won’t be good.

And yet, we are continually being sold cheap and fast. Every day there’s a new free tool to help you do something (as I wrote about a couple of weeks ago). Or you’ll find services being offered to do stuff fast (manage your social media in just minutes a day!).

Just yesterday, I saw something about how to make your own infographics quickly. This is because creating shareable infographics is a common digital marketing tactic. But not all infographics are shareable, mainly because they are not very good. Many times they don’t have enough information, or the right information, or they are not visually appealing. And other times they have too much information and are hard to understand. If digital marketers continue thinking all that is needed is an infographic, and that designing one can be done cheaply and quickly, then infographics will become useless if they haven’t already.

When you are going for the fast and cheap, you are focused on cost (time and money) instead of value (what you get for your time and money).

In times when budgets are tight and time is scarce, unless there’s a shift to focusing on value, people will continue to fall for the fast and cheap. And we know the fast and cheap may work in the very short term, but will rarely work to achieve long term business and communications goals.

What are your thoughts? Is there something that can be done fast and cheap and be worthwhile?