Pricing is the most avoided conversation in creative services. Most agencies set rates based on what competitors charge, what clients seem willing to pay, or what feels "fair" relative to hours worked. All three are wrong.
Pricing is a positioning decision. High prices filter for clients who take the work seriously. Low prices attract clients who want cheap, which produces bad work, which damages your portfolio, which makes it harder to charge high prices. It's a compounding trap.
Value-Based Pricing in Practice
For a rebrand engagement, we ask one question at the beginning: if this rebrand succeeds, what will it be worth to your business in the next three years? We then price at approximately 10% of that number.
This sounds aggressive until you consider the alternative. If a brand refresh generates $2M in additional revenue over three years, a $200k project fee is obviously good value. If it costs $20k, the client will wonder how much of their business's future we're really investing in.
The number doesn't always work out to exactly 10% — some clients' numbers are too large, some businesses too early-stage to model confidently. But the conversation reframes the engagement from "how many hours will this take" to "what outcome are we creating together."
