Should Your Brand Agency Customize Its Projects?

Custom sounds good. It sounds expensive. When you buy something off the rack it’s always cheaper than when you buy something custom made for you. 

So when you are selling your branding services and you (naturally) want to sell at higher prices (maybe higher than you are comfortable with), you think that work, too, must be custom.

The problem is, it’s hard to make “custom” profitable. When every client requires a bunch of different steps and pieces, you end up spending a lot more time than you plan for managing the project itself. Not only that, but when the process is slightly different every time you deliver, it takes longer to complete.

There is a reason Henry Ford became so famous and successful for developing the assembly line: Repeating the same process over and over means you can become more efficient and churn out a more reliable product with a more reliable input of time and money.

I can already hear the creative grumbling. Assembly line? We build unique, bespoke, special brands for our customers. Each client is a unique snowflake and we would never want to box them in to an assembly-line process.

But thinking that way is your biggest challenge, and it’s actually keeping you from delivering the even higher value that you want to deliver. I know it’s important to you to deliver the best outcome. It is for me, too. And I want to prove why custom is not the way to go.

Instead, I believe in the tight process and the assembly line–inspired business, but not because I want to box people in. Every brand we build at Worstofall Design is special and unique to the particular client. In fact, it is more unique because we have a tight, reliable process. 

Want to know why?

Our process allows us to spend 90% of our time focused on the creative work, and only 10% managing the project and the client. We get to stay focused creatively on the task at hand—you know, the part of the project we are actually being paid for! Our focus is not diverted by rando emails and annoying meetings or by revisions that often hurt, not help, the end result. Our process allows our creative, bold, and exciting work to get through to the end precisely because it’s so reliable and tight.

Not just that, but we also get to ride the high of the project from beginning to end. Have you ever started a project with a client super excited about all the possibilities, but months later you’re still waiting for assets and they’ve asked for changes you don’t agree with and their sister-in-law has now joined the conversation and giving her notes about color that is totally off brief but you have to pretend to listen anyway?

Yeah, we’ve all been there. It’s not the way to get the best creative result for your clients. You are not in the frame of mind to do your best work. I’ve gotten so sick of a project that dragged on way too long that at a certain point I just gave up and gave in. If they want to change this color to yellow and make that font three times bigger, FINE—just do it and end this nightmare!

Although I know a lot of creatives will have a gut reaction to the idea of repeating the same process for each client, I also know if they experienced the freedom it actually creates for creativity, they would change their tune.

Another reason customizing everything for a client’s project isn’t as valuable as it first seems is that it creates a lot of opportunities for choice, and therefore disappointment. There is a great TED talk about how we make choices and how we feel about the choices we make. Sheena Iyengar shares a study done in a supermarket where they were offering free samples of jelly. In a nutshell, they found that people had a harder time choosing among 28 different varieties than only 3, and they were less satisfied with their pick afterward.

Basically it was full FOMO in action. 

When you customize a project, you have nothing but possibilities. It’s why when you pitch a project with a laundry list of everything you could do with line items and estimated hours to compilation, clients will often bust out the red pen and start asking for changes. When I pitched this way, for example, clients often asked if they could write their own copy and take that part out of the budget.

When faced with a custom proposal, the opportunity to make the project “exactly” what they want is too tempting. They start futzing, and they often look for ways to alter it to make it better, both before and during the project. It’s also why clients will come in midway through and bring new ideas and new people with new opinions or add-ons. There are just so many options available to them, so many flavors of jelly, they worry they picked the wrong one. 

And the worst part is, even after they choose, they have MORE DOUBT that they made the right decisions.

Now let’s forget about the creative work for a second and assume your work is incredible. It’s the BEST it could have been. What if that also didn’t matter because the process the client went through, even though they love it, still left lingering doubt in their mind that it is “right”?

Instead, if you hand someone not even three options for jelly, but only the BEST jelly option, and you tell them the berries are very special because they are seasonal and available for only a few weeks a year and this is the jelly that all the five-star restaurants in town backorder, and then you give them a taste and they love it and buy it, are they going to be disappointed? Or are they going to be so happy with their purchase, so happy to bring this jelly home, and then enjoy it until it’s gone?

Science says the latter. And it’s why you, too, have the responsibility to serve up the ONE offer, something you do for every client, that they can rely on. That is the BEST option for them. And inside the project, please do customize the work—it’s what they are paying for. But don’t customize the process. It gives the illusion of value while actually decreasing the value the client gets from you in the end.

Need more insights into how to productize your services so you can stop selling custom projects and deliver higher value to happier clients while making more profit in the end? Click here to watch this 12-minute training on how to get rid of custom projects forever.