Times are tough. Clients are looking for ways to cut costs. In this climate, pricing is one of the hardest conversations designers have with clients.
When times get tough, brand investment is often one of the first things questioned. The client’s assumption is simple: if we stop spending on branding, marketing or communications for a while, nothing much will change.
The evidence suggests otherwise.
Researchers at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science at Adelaide University tracked 41 brands that stopped investing in brand advertising for a year or more.
The results were sobering.
Sales declined by an average of 16% in the first year.
By the second year, the decline had reached 25%.
By the third year, sales were down 36%.
For designers, this creates an important opportunity to shift the conversation. Instead of discussing the cost of a brand project, discuss the cost of doing nothing.ost, gives them a range to react to, and starts the budget conversation from expertise, not guesswork.Here’s what we’ve learned from over a decade mentoring Australian designers
Questions to ask your client
Ask clients:
“If you stopped investing in your brand for 18 months, what would happen to your ability to attract new customers?”
“What would happen to your ability to justify our pricing?”
“What would happen to awareness, trust and preference in the market?”
“If we apply the the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute findings where would your sales be in year one, two and three.”
These are business questions, not design questions. They take a data driven approach.
As Kathryn McArthur, Consumer & Shopper Insights Manager at Colgate-Palmolive, observed:
Having data-driven marketing principles is like turning on a light in a darkened room. A lot of the furniture isn’t where you imagined it, but now the arrangement makes considerably more sense..
Design is not a discretionary spend
The reality is, strong brands help organisations maintain visibility, build memory structures, create trust and support pricing power. When investment stops, those advantages gradually erode. Competitors continue to invest, customers forget, and acquisition becomes harder and more expensive.
This is why design should not be positioned as a discretionary expense. It is an investment in future demand.
The next time a client focuses on the cost of design, help them consider the alternative.
The real question is not: “Can we afford to invest in our brand?”
It is: “What will it cost us if we don’t?”
As always, happy to discuss further, just email Greg
Greg Branson
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