“Make It Remarkable on a Shoestring”

An observation worth starting with

There is a pattern noticed by almost everyone who has worked in communications for more than five years, yet it is rarely said aloud. Large companies with real budgets generally set proportionate tasks and pay accordingly. Small and mid-sized businesses may cut costs everywhere — salaries, contractors, production — while still expecting work on the level of brands with substantial resources.

The request to “make something remarkable, but this is the entire budget” has become so familiar that it no longer sounds odd. It should. Nobody asks a builder to construct a house like the neighbour’s for a tenth of the price because “you are a professional — you will think of something.” In communications, this logic has become routine.

Most of the time, there is no malice behind it. The client genuinely does not understand what they are buying and therefore cannot judge what it should cost. That misunderstanding — rather than resentment — is where the conversation needs to begin.

Why an idea is invisible until it is finished

Physical labour has one saving quality: it can be seen. A client sees how many bricks went into a wall, how long the excavator was running, and how many metres of cable were laid. Cost is tied to observable volume.

Intellectual work behaves differently, and this is the root of the problem. A strategist or creative produces an idea, a solution, a phrase. Once finished, a good idea looks obvious — so obvious that it prompts the question: what was there to invent? It was right there all along.

That apparent inevitability is precisely what devalues the work. The client sees the final line of positioning, not the forty discarded versions. They see a simple, exact campaign, not the three weeks it took to distil that simplicity from a mess of inputs. The better the work, the more effortless and inevitable it appears — and the easier it is to assume it cost nothing to create.

This is the profession’s fundamental paradox: quality conceals effort. Poor work announces itself through excess, affectation and visible seams. Good work disappears into what feels natural. Psychologically, paying for something that appears natural is difficult.

Where “a good specialist can invent anything” came from

There is a truth behind this belief, which is what makes it dangerous. Strong specialists really can work within severe constraints. Limits on budget, time and resources can produce a stronger solution than total freedom. That much is true.

But the market took the valid observation that “a talented person can work with constraints” and reached a false conclusion: constraints deserve less money, not more. The logic turned inside out. The ability to create in scarcity stopped being a skill worthy of a premium and became a reason to pay less.

The result is a trap. The more accomplished you are, the less people expect to pay, because “you will come up with something.” Your competence begins to work against your income. This is no longer a quirk of perception but a distortion of the economy: the market penalises mastery instead of rewarding it.

What the client is actually buying

A useful conversation about price begins by making the invisible visible. A client thinks they are buying outputs: posts, layouts, a film, a strategy deck. In reality, they are buying three things, none of which sits plainly on the surface.

First: risk removed. A specialist who knows what is likely to work and what is not saves the client not the specialist’s time, but the client’s money — the money otherwise lost to mistakes. Experience is expensive precisely because it prevents expensive errors. Paying for experience means paying not to pay twice.

Second: rejected options. The value of a decision lies not only in what was proposed, but in what was ruled out. The forty discarded ideas are the work being paid for. The one that remains is merely its visible result.

Third: responsibility. A specialist who accepts a project also accepts an obligation to its outcome. That is not the same as “making a picture.” It is a position in which, if the solution fails, you are accountable. Responsibility has a price, and the greater it is, the more the work is worth.

Why underpricing harms more than the practitioner

There is an uncomfortable point specialists themselves need to hear. A market accustomed to demanding remarkable work for almost nothing exists not only because clients are reluctant to pay. It also exists because someone is always willing to accept the offer.

As long as people take on premium-complexity assignments at survival-level fees, clients can reasonably assume that this is the market price. They are not villains; they see someone doing the work for that amount and conclude that this must be what it costs. One person’s underpricing weakens the market for everyone — including the person who burns out six months later and leaves the profession after the price has already been reset.

Ultimately, the client loses too. A specialist working for an unsustainable fee cannot give the project the attention it needs. They take five projects instead of two just to stay afloat and deliver each at half capacity. The client does not receive “something remarkable for almost nothing”; they receive exactly what almost nothing buys, then lose faith in communications altogether. Devaluation damages quality, and poor quality appears to confirm that the work was never worth paying for. The circle closes.

What a healthy conversation about price looks like

Outrage does not change a market. A different way of discussing value can — and every specialist can begin that conversation now, without waiting for an industry-wide reform.

First: stop selling output and start selling outcomes. “Ten posts” is an output, priced according to the production of ten posts. “A higher repeat-purchase rate” is an outcome, valued against the revenue it creates. As long as the specialist prices units, the conversation will remain a negotiation over quantity.

Second: make the invisible visible. Show not only the final decision but also the reasoning, the discarded options and the evidence behind it. This is not about inflating a fee. It lets the client see the work hidden by a polished result. A strong proposal explains not merely what the client will receive, but why it will work — and in doing so, makes the labour legible.

Third: define responsibility explicitly. State what depends on the specialist, what depends on the client and what conditions the outcome requires. A specialist who names the boundaries of responsibility does not appear weaker, but more professional. Their work immediately becomes more valuable because it is no longer a bundle of “pictures”; it is an obligation.

What the industry should learn to treat as normal

An individual specialist can change the way they discuss price today. But some principles need to become shared norms, or underpricing will continue to erode them.

Work should be valued by the responsibility it carries, not the number of content units produced. Two posts that change a brand’s positioning are worth more than two hundred that merely fill a feed. As long as the market counts units, it is counting the wrong thing.

A limited budget should be recognised as a separate challenge, not grounds for a discount. Working under constraints is more difficult than working with abundant resources. Logically, it should cost no less — perhaps more. Today, that logic is reversed.

The belief that a specialist who “can invent anything” need not be valued has to go. The ability to create under pressure is a mark of the highest qualification, not a disposable resource.

None of these norms will arrive from above. They are formed through every conversation between a specialist and a client. The market is the sum of those conversations. If most people continue to accept remarkable briefs for negligible fees, the norm will remain. If most learn to reveal the value of ideas and name that value without apology, it will change.

Clients, incidentally, are often willing to listen. They did not necessarily intend to devalue the work; they simply could not see what they were paying for. Make it visible, and the conversation may unfold very differently from what you fear.