We're Increasing Our Prices

While machines are making good work cheaper, we're raising our prices. Neat!

Exciting news, all: Love and Money is increasing its rate card.

Ok so obviously that’s exciting news for us. Here’s why I think it’s exciting for you too clients, collaborators and contemporaries.

Firstly, I don’t want to try and justify this increase through myriad extenuating circumstances the wild world is making available to me right now — though I’m sure if I did nobody would be surprised. Inflation, etc. etc.

Rather, I want to share why I think this marks a step change in our agency, an investment in our people, process and ultimately product that will benefit us and our partners. And also, why I think the challenges the creative industry is facing with the emergence of ostensible job-napping tech like Chat GPT and Bard — and to like, a way lesser extent whatever Meta’s now pivoted to — is potentially a huge opportunity for us to do better work than ever.

Firstly, why are we raising our rates? Simple. We want to improve our standard of delivery. 

Having spoken to many of our clients over the past quarter (both formally and informally) it’s become obvious that while our team is producing ever-better, world-class creative work, we’ve been falling short on both our production and client service. As a learning organisation, we don’t mind failing. But not learning from failure isn’t any kind of way to learn.

Some quick context: we've grown an incredible amount over the last few years (~70–90% YoY), from a team of three at the start of COVID, to an international team of 30 today. Until this point we've been able to mostly invest in making our design, development and strategy talent. And when we say “investing” we don’t just mean hiring, but in training and developing our young talent through sponsored education, mentorship, and good old-fashioned encouragement.

I can proudly say our talent is starting to rival some of the best in the world. Now, we're now at the age and stage where our delivery and partnerships team need to be at the same level.

And because 70% of our business is now coming from the Northern Hemisphere, we’ll also be focussing a fair amount of our energy on expanding our North Hem team, with further hires in the UK/EU (along with a new Working-From Home in London), and our first hires in the USA. More on that soon.

Because we’re self-funded, and because we’re growing so quickly, we need to make sure we’re profitable enough to be able to turn around and invest back in that growth — again, not just in growing the team, but in growing each team member.

I understand that this price hike may alienate some of our long-standing clients. But while we fundamentally believe that the best work happens with our long-term clients (Always Beta, after all), we understand that not all clients will want to pay more for what they’re already getting. I get that.

But I’ve come to understand what’s also critical to great work is that our partners value our time and the work we do; that they’re as invested in our continued growth and profitability as we are in theirs. We’re hell-bent on doing the best work in the world; that requires the best partners in the world. And the best partners are the ones who are willing to invest in the best work.

Because that's what creativity is: not an expense, but an investment. Think about it — what single force in human history has driven more value than creative thought? How does one create anything without creativity?

Of course, as an independent business, we also understand the realities of working to tight budgets. As someone who’s watched, grown, and started a few companies over the past 10 years, I understand the importance of ROIC. A big part of our service has always been helping to ensure that any budget our clients do have is spent in the way we both agree will have the most impact. We think now's the time to double down on this strategy as a service. That’s why setting Couple Goals™ with each and every client has become a central part of any long-term client relationship; we believe we'll grow our clients if we help our clients grow. 

But what does this all mean at the dawn of a new type of technology that creates 10x coders seemingly overnight, puts 3D artists out of a job, and can do whatever this dystopic pizza commercial thing is apparently of its own volition?

The daily array of proliferating flavours of LLM/Chat GPT has forced us free-range, organic workers to stare into the abyss and consider our role in the working world. Developments in AI are driving down the cost of quantity (what I call the “Marginal Cost of Creativity”) down to near zero.

This leaves us (and our clients) to openly consider the role of creative agency (and, indeed, this creative agency) in the ongoing project of building and iterating on living, digital brands.

But we believe the future is bright: we're facing an opportunity to focus on creative quality, not repetitive quantity. Rather than jealously guarding our lot, we’ve been doubling down on building systems that allow our clients more control, not less.

This is why we’re so invested in helping our clients to set actionable goals, and create scalable systems. The more we're aligned, the more we both grow. And the more we can automate, the more room we’ll all have to create.

We call it Maximising Room for Magic™. But we've always thought of it as giving our work The Love. 

So while our hourly rate will go up, the cost of creative output overall should come down as we always look to do more with less. 

The future we see is one of noticeably more efficient, effective, and ultimately engaging work. We hope it’s a future you’re as excited about as we are.

See you on the Internet. In the future. 

Charl Laubscher
Founder, Creative, Executive, Director