What Does Brand Consulting Cost?
Asked about brand consulting cost, most people picture one figure: the price of a logo package. Yet design is the most visible line of the total, not the only one. 💰
Short answer: three lines — decision work (listening, position, promise), message set (words and example texts), application (contact points). Design sits inside the third line and isn’t mandatory in most businesses.
Below: the lines, the multipliers, where to cut, and the arithmetic of a cheap quote. 🔦
What are the lines?
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- Decision work: the real effort
- Message set: the decision’s words
- Application: contact points
Brand consulting cost gathers under three headings.
Decision work: the real effort
Customer conversations, team interviews, writing the position and promise, the proof list. This line is paid once but is the source of every text that follows. Skipped, everything else rests on guesswork. 🎤
Message set: the decision’s words
The words to use, the forbidden ones, and three example texts. It looks like a small line but it’s the part that makes the work applicable — details in the brand voice article. ✍️
Application: contact points
The site opening line, the quote text, the first reply pattern; a logo and visual system if needed. Scope here is set by how many points, and most of the price difference comes from this. 📍
Where does design fit?
Inside the third line, and conditionally. If the existing identity doesn’t contradict the promise, this line may never open — the boundary sits in the identity-or-brand article.
What decides the cost?
The same work costs differently in different businesses.
Three multipliers
1) How many conversations — five or fifteen? 2) How many contact points in scope? 3) How many services or audiences — one promise, or sub-sentences too? The third creates the most variance. 🔢
Where can you cut, where can’t you?
On a tight budget, sequence matters.
The cutting order
Cut design first: keep the existing identity. Then the number of contact points: start with three. Three things never to cut: customer conversations, writing the promise and proof, the three example texts. Cutting those makes the rest pointless. 🚨
What’s the arithmetic of a cheap quote?
There’s a reason for the price gap.
What’s our model?
We don’t hide the numbers.
Hour-capacity and the three-month plan
The work runs inside a monthly capacity: Core (30 hours), Pro (60 hours), Max (90 hours). Hours are allocated at the start of the month — conversations, promise writing, message set, application — and an hour log arrives at the end. Plan: month 1 listening and the decision document, month 2 message set and the first three contact points, month 3 spreading and measurement. The return calculation sits in the return article, plans on the AINEO page. ⚙️
📝 Field Notes
A client brought two quotes. The cheap one had fourteen design items and no customer conversations. The expensive one had five conversations and listed design conditionally: “if needed”. They chose the second and design never became necessary — the existing logo carried the promise. The price difference isn’t in the outputs, it’s in the decision. 🧮
📖 Quick Glossary
Decision work: listening, position and promise writing. Message set: words, prohibitions and example texts. Contact point: everywhere a customer meets the brand. Hour log: the list of how many hours went to which job.
⚡ Quick Summary
Three lines: decision, message set, application. 💰 Design sits inside the third line and is conditional. Multipliers: conversation count, contact point count, service-audience count. Never cut: conversations, promise writing, three example texts.
🎯 Next Step
Let’s establish your three multipliers and produce a realistic budget range: the quote page or the AINEO plans. ⚙️
Frequently Asked Questions
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A step gets added: logo, colour, templates and revision rounds. This line is visible, so most quotes push it to the front — but design that doesn’t carry a decision produces no result on its own. 🖌️
Usually one of three: no customer conversations (the decision gets produced from the story you tell), no promise writing (only design is delivered), no application (a document is handed over, never carried). All three are invisible omissions — reading a quote sits in the quote article. 🧮
You can, and it’s a reasonable start for a small business. The condition: the decision document must be carried to at least three contact points or it stays on a shelf. If you’ll handle the application yourself, insist on the example texts.
It might; what matters is giving the designer the decision document as the brief. Buying elsewhere isn’t the problem, buying without a brief is. A good brief cuts the rounds and lowers the total cost too.
There’s no mandatory ongoing cost; the decision document and message set stay with you. Small updates are needed when a service or audience is added. A yearly review is enough in most businesses.
Source: Ipsos — knowledge centre