Too expensive

intresting!!!!

I doubt they did just one or two mockups done by one or two people before acceptance. I’m guessing months of redesigns and strategic planning by multiple boards went into these. Most of the fees probably went toward paying for things that were not even remotely used.

Then again, I’m just guessing.

Too much… way tooooo much!

i had clients like this.
it starts with a “could you do a quick (whatever)?”
and it ends 2 and a half year later.
between endless discussions are located among millions of scetches, broken processes short before the end because a new partner needs to be asked . . . . . .
i just have the wrong clients

Really, the price should reflect the amount of coverage it receives. What is the true value of an identity? If you are designing a logo for a small business with a bricks and mortar audience of say -a twelve mile radius, then yeah- the price is gonna be quite low. Logo for a major, global television network? I would go with charging £400,000.
Nice work if you can get it.

I have same question with Sam.
What make them so expensive?

Michael bang on it’s ridiculous to class these as graphic design fees. It’s the visual and the verbal branding/ positioning. Which then the organisation has to implement. That can be a huge task just identifying that.

These are not a cost of time and effort to do the logo but rather a cost of what the organisation can pay.

Good branding is priceless!

I think i am under charging for my logo designs by far

The rebranding prices are reasonable. I mean, your talking about a complete change in your marketing campaign and changing the way the public views your company, and that is going to cost you a lot.

The logos sound about right too. A good designer charges about $100 an hour. But it usually only takes about 5 hours to do something, then you factor that they live off that money and probably only have 4 or 5 of those a month and that equates to roughly $50,000 a year. Add a wife and kids and that barely cuts it on a yearly basis.

$136m for the BP identity. I mean, it’s a great logo, granted - but that is just insane!

These are huge budgets, i knew there was a lot of money spent on advertising and branding but for a logo design to cost 400k especially when the Olympic 2012 design is so controversial.

But let’s be honest here Charlie … these prices are not JUST for the logo.

The brandmark is never developed on it’s own or in isolation in these situations. It’s part of a larger visual language (colour palettes, patterns, application comps, online/offline testing, copywriting, tone of voice, etc etc) and is delivered as an integrated visual language representing the brand strategy in most instances.

As for a rebranding vs branding … the work involved in a rebranding is exactly the same, if not more. Sure, there’s equities to build upon, but often defining a new market position because the current one is outdated is the hardest challenge and finding a unique way of evolving the brand whilst retaining a link to the past is more difficult that just ‘let’s make the old logo look contemporary’.

So to say that the logo … by itself … cost $xxxxxxx … is therefore somewhat misleading. It simply sounds like one guy sat in a corner drawing logos … without any context.

You could pull out any phase of a rebranding and do exactly the same for dramatic effect:

- ‘The copywriting cost $1,000,000? Oh my god … for a few words?’
- ‘The project management was $2,000,000? I’m changing professions!’
- ‘The brand strategy cost $5,000,000? For ‘innovation and sustainability?’ I could have told them that!’

I just find that these types of posts don’t educate anyone about the bigger picture … as you can see from most reactions … they invoke a ‘For a logo? I’m gonna charge more!’ or ‘That’s ridiculous! Me and my copy of Photoshop could do better!’

None of which helps the creative industry or the professionals who do this for a living.

And graphic designers keep wondering why they struggle to get professional recognition and have their work devalued. We cut ourselves down from the inside out.

An easier way to make my point:
If you have the inside information of the exact cost of the logo development only … could you post the full costs of all the other phases for comparison then? eg Strategy, applications, guidelines, visual language, etc?

If a new brand identity can help a company make billions in sales, why wouldn’t it be worth a couple of million?

Say, would Pepsi take you seriously as a designer if your fee for a logo to be used world-wide was $10,000?
Probably not.

I know it’s all great fun reading all this, but I know for a fact that 50% of the brands on here DID NOT cost as much as 20% what is being suggested. I have been in the branding industry for 22 years and have worked on many leading global brands, and I know that these days it is very hard for companies to survive at the costs that they can charge. Agencies have to pay £150 to £300 per day for freelancers and £500 to £800 per day for consultants, some projects can take months due to company red tape, trademark searches, trademarking, research, application, guidelines etc. I payed some guy to clean my drains more than we make per day, so these websites are very frustrating and mostly rubbish.

What are these prices based on? Fixed scope? Open-ended multi-year retainer projects with a half a dozen or more facing the client, or? Are they happy with result? I think the subject should be “agencies actually collect on crazy out of scope rebranding!” if they did collect..

Wow only if companies knew what REALLY matters to the consumers.

Sounds like too many artists here didn’t read the article. But hey, if it makes you feel better to believe that the millions are for a few hours with an artist, some paper and a box of crayons, nothing’s stopping you.

They are the best brands cos they been successful in using the same money they get from consumers to spend on convincing the same consumers that they are the BEST ! But These BIG numbers are things of past now ! The numbers shown here true or not,are pretty huge spending considering the economic conditions

To call these rebranding changes expensive without knowing more about each situation and brand objective is, I’m sorry, unprofessional. I don’t even particularly like the new Pepsi logo, for example, but spending $1 million on a logo redesign is not much for them, although I guarantee you it cost a lot more than that to implement the redesign on every can, bottle, vending machine, letterhead, and so on worldwide. Their CEO is paid about $15 million per year, so $1 million is very little to spend on the logo that they are entrusting to represent such an omnipresent brand for the next several years.

If anything, the other rebrand expenditures are probably more realistic. When you look at the £136 million that BP spent, for instance, also consider that, without blinking, they recently set aside $20 billion to compensate Gulf-area victims of a spill. $20 Billion to suck up oil that they can’t even re-sell, and it barely touched their bottom line. By comparison, you think they consider £136 million expensive?

I wish more companies took their brand image this seriously, not because I’m looking to get rich off of them, but because companies who understand the value of investing in their brand(s) properly have ALWAYS allowed me the time and resources to do a better job. It’s those who don’t see that they are undercutting their own well-being by taking the cheap route who disappoint me. If you don’t believe me, wear your cheapest, most run-down suit to your next new business meeting and see what happens.

No way thats crazy!

My pockets are by far not that deep as I am trying to re-brand my company right now. You have to understand just as a good employee represents your company when out in the marketplace, so does a good logo and brand marketing materials. Would you think highly of a huge reputable company having a clipart logo put together in Word? Absolutely not. Why pay millions in ad dollars to market a stick figure or flower drawn by my 3 year old. Recognition is priceless and I hope one day I can pay a professional to help me get there. Look deeper than a number or a statistic and understand a goal or objective being achieved with many head beating table discussions.

So misleading. Some companies are more transparent about their rebrand costs than others so the figures cant really be compared on a level playing field. I would guess that Accenture included its stationery costs in this - so with 177,000 staff it probably spent over a £1m on business cards.
And obviously implementation costs are going to vary massively depending on the type of company - BP has more external signage requirements than eg the BBC.

I think this is the cost of the agency stuff work and of the image already created.

You can lower the cost hiring one person (a freelance) or a small agency and get a nice 300$-500$ price for a logo, but the result will be as is - a logo and a small guideline. When you are a big agency with a strong brand, there is very much at stake. You cannot risk all your brand. That’s why you make a contest, hire an agency, which asks you a big price. In this case you can ask whatever you want and the agency after that become responsible for all the fuss after the rebranding - you can charge it for the disaster and get a nice PR during the trial.

These re branding really mean it.

We do the same job but charge very low.

Goooodness gracious those are some huge nmbers…

Geniuses!

It all depends on how much bull***t you display as market survey …market analysis…focus group studies…blah blah blah !!! neither presenter nor the management understands what it is …so both praise the efforts !!
then design a crap and charge a million bucks !! plain simple

Insane and the fact is I bet 90% ended up paying at least double in the long run.

I didn’t see it mentioned in the article or brought up in the comments, but …
It would seem to me that the real costs are not necessarily in the design fees or even directly to the brand consultants. These companies have international exposure and therefore they have brand considerations that transcend the normal requirements of “gee, that looks pretty”. Language, culture, religion and the more expensive one, consumer reaction have to be studied. I would be shocked if there weren’t scores (or more) of variations tested with focus groups around the globe with highly credentialed people (most likely oozing bs) weighing in on the results. And given the corporate climate and the stakes for screwing up, if there is any doubt, you’d test some more.

So while I hope the graphic artists were richly compensated, I’m sure they didn’t get the lion’s share.

The costs associated relate to the time spent working on developing the brand. Its hard to really explain how long it takes to a non-graphic designer, but there are a lot of steps involved. One first has to understand the company, and their previous attempts. Then there is a phase of experimenting, trying new ideas, combining those ideas-always trying to better express the company through an abstract mark. Logo design is particularly difficult. When a group develops a logo that looks ,”simple” it is really anything but. Simplicity in design is the hardest thing to obtain, because the tendency to over design is constantly present.

Take the Pepsi logo for instance. That was already a very recognizable mark. As the firm tasked with re-designing the logo you can not drastically alter the form of the mark because then you would throw out years of collected brand recognition. So the firm has to work 50 times harder because they have to make a super subtle change which presents what already exists in a new light. It may seem silly to most but there is probably a books worth of writing which explains how adjusting the white space in the Pepsi logo better expresses the brand.

And sure some of these numbers are a bit rediculious but take the BP logo for instance. Look how pleasant that looks -and it represents a company which is one of the most toxic in the industry. Telling such sweet poetic lies is very expensive artistry

Perfect, there are a lot of money out there, those companies earn a lot.
It’s branding, not a simple logo.

Great graphic designers but even better Sales people!

as a graphic designer, these prices are encouraging! I love it. Would love to be good enough some day to be given that kind of opportunity.

Some of these prices are just insane! Those logos for 400k are ridiculous.

Chris makes a very good point in comment 23. These branding costs include much more than simply creating a logo design. I must say, it would be nice to be a fly on the wall at one of these creative firms, to see exactly what goes into the process of re-branding one of the world’s largest companies.

they already spent, no matter of discussion please..they are worth and help us in our tariff restructuring…very inspiring :-))

I think i am under charging for my logo designs

Perfect, there are a lot of money out there, those companies earn a lot.
It’s branding, not a simple logo.