002: Content: Fast, cheap, and awful.

Content. Advertising professionals have spent the past few years placing hastily-conceived and shoddily-built sacrifices upon its altar. The poorly-written articles. The embarrassingly-cheap videos. The camera-phone photography.

All of it disposable. All of it forgettable.

Want to post a video on social media? Easy. Want to shoot a video? We can knock it out this afternoon. Hell, you can get a logo online for five bucks.

But ideas? Ideas are still hard. Good ones are incredibly rare and extremely valuable. And that should lead us to an important realization: In the era of content, quality is a powerful differentiator.

Oh sure. As stewards of our clients’ budgets, we have a responsibility to take advantage of cost savings where we can find them. But we’re also the keepers of their brands—and the ability to produce “content” quickly and easily doesn’t supersede the sanctity of the brand.

But before you upload that next homemade sales video, consider its actual cost. Maybe it was cheap to make. But the price paid by your brand could be very high, indeed.