Many of our best clients are entrepreneurs and organizations who've never worked with a creative firm before. Here are some questions that come up in our meetings, and we hope they're helpful as you make decisions about how to allocate marketing budget.

Why should I talk to a creative agency?

A creative agency can best position your brand for success, whether you’re trying to attract a new type of customer, create awareness for a campaign or revamp your image in the marketplace. In much the same way that professional attorneys and accountants can help your business succeed, professional designers and writers are best able to help you achieve these goals.

From social media to company websites to reviews to traditional placement advertising, customers are constantly encountering brands and making decisions about where to spend their money. The brand has to resonate genuinely with a dedicated audience in order to achieve success and longevity. Positioning the brand through visual and verbal elements is a strategy that requires professional skill.

Sounds good. Why should I talk to Creative Distillery?

Creative Distillery is a family business that genuinely cares about our small business and nonprofit clients. We come from entrepreneurial families ourselves, and we are invested in the success of your brand. We do creative work that’s not a flash-in-the-pan trend, but is rooted in time-tested visual and conceptual principles. We offer personal service and excellent work that’s at a perfect price point: not bottom-of-the-barrel cheapest, but also not breaking your budget, either.

How much is it going to cost?

Projects can vary based on the amount of work for completion, the scope of the audience and the size of the organization. We accommodate many types of clients across different industries. Our best clients are organizations because they’re already familiar with the need to set aside a budget for marketing and design. The fees we charge go toward the creation of work that is intended to bring in a higher return for your organization. Though prices will vary depending on the project, the range that the average client spends is:
Website: $2,500 to $10,000
Logo Identity Package: $1,000 to $3,000
Social Media Marketing Retainer: $1,000 monthly
SEO Blog Writing: $75 per post; packages of four
Product Packaging: $1,500 to $5,000
Annual Report: $800-$1500
Event Design: $400-$800
Copywriting: Starting at around $1,000 per project

I’d better wait for business to pick up before investing in branding.

When business is slow, it is exactly the *right* time to invest in branding! There are some factors we can’t control: location, business overhead, etc. However, we can work with you to identify your customers’ needs and create materials to steer those perceptions in your favor. For example, a spa that charges upscale prices for its house brand of skincare products but prints the labels on its home computer will have a difficult time convincing wealthy buyers that the product is worth the premium. However, upscale labeling on the product will create the impression of a premium-valued product and resonate with your target clients.

What do I get?

At the beginning of the project, we’ll agree on “deliverables:” the final product you’re getting. It may be a package of four blog posts, a functioning website or an advertisement as a PDF for print publication. We deliver final products that are always top-quality and highly professional. What we don’t deliver are “source files,” meaning Photoshop or other design files that you could then edit yourself or have someone else work from. The reason for this policy is that those files are proprietary to us and represent our experience and technique. The finished deliverable is the work for hire that you have commissioned.

How do I see value?

The real, day-to-day value clients see from our work is as varied as the clients themselves. Diver’s D\Lyte has worked with us from the inception of the product: developing the brand from scratch and helping it grow quickly. As the product is making its way to wholesale retailers, the nationwide advertising campaign is building from the strong branding work we’ve done. We recently wrote and designed an email marketing newsletter to send through a national diving publication, and the publication reported that our email was the highest-performing email it has ever seen in open and click-through rates. Cups Espresso Cafe saw huge excitement and increased sales from their franchisees at carrying the new line of Christmas coffee flavors and candies that we designed updated packaging for. Faith And Reason found themselves making headway with national Christian organizations through a refocused website, branding and blog outreach. NutsOnline, a national retailer of bulk snack products, has developed an open social media dialogue with customers and an outreach program using blog reviews from popular food and lifestyle blogs of its products.

What’s the difference between Creative Distillery and a big advertising agency?

First of all, we don’t really do media placement except under special circumstances. Ad agencies will buy media at a reduced wholesale rate and sell it to the customer at a slight markup. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that; it’s just not what we specialize in. We also stay at a size where we don’t need to carry a big administrative staff. We don’t have a big fancy office, and we’re able to keep costs under control by supporting only the creative products we generate for our clients.

What’s the difference between Creative Distillery and my nephew who’s good with computers?

We have experience and training in our fields. We’ve worked with clients big and small in markets from Mississippi to San Francisco. We have specialized knowledge of the printing industry and stay up to date on the latest trends so that your organization is always positioned to succeed.