From CHF 15,000 to over 100,000. Why the gap is so wide, what you're really paying for, and when it's better to wait.
"How much does it cost?" It's the question we hear most often. And our first answer is also the one nobody likes to hear: it depends.
So let's be specific. At DARE, a brand strategy starts at around CHF 15,000 to 20,000 for a brand that's just launching. For a company that has been established for decades, projects quickly reach CHF 40,000 or 50,000, and can exceed CHF 100,000 depending on the size of the company and what's at stake.
The gap between these amounts has nothing to do with the number of pages in the final document. It depends on everything we need to understand before we can recommend anything at all.
Take two companies.
The first one is launching. It has no history yet, no long-standing clients and no habits to change. Our work starts by understanding the market it will operate in: its competitors, its future clients, what the field expects. Today, AI gives us a first reading of the market much faster than before, which doesn't replace real analysis. We then define with the founders the intention that drives the brand and the offer it represents: its DNA, its promise, its mission, its vision, its values, its personality, its character, the emotions it should create, its positioning and what sets it apart.
The second one has existed for more than a century. Several generations have run it, it has loyal clients, employees who know it better than anyone and a reputation built step by step. It isn't starting from scratch, and that is exactly what makes the work delicate. A brand is built over the long term: it evolves, it changes, but it never wipes out its past. Before proposing anything, we have to listen to that past, understand it, respect it and welcome it. We talk to employees and to recent and long-standing clients to learn how they see the brand, what they have experienced with it and what they remember spontaneously. We try to understand its heart and its guts, because a brand is lived, passed on and felt far more than it is described.
Two brands, and yet two very different contexts. The first mainly needs to be built, the second first needs everything that already exists to be understood. It's only natural that their budgets have little in common.
Sometimes part of this work has already been done. For BCV's employer brand, we were able to build on existing internal and external perception studies, which we analysed and integrated into our thinking. Other times, it's up to us to gather the information in the field. Either way, we recommend the ideal action plan to the client, and then we decide together what their resources allow us to do.
We could suggest ideas after a first two-hour meeting. They wouldn't bring you much.
Ideas are no longer in short supply. They are everywhere, and an AI can produce dozens of them in seconds. What has become rare is judgment: knowing which one is right for your brand, in your market, at this precise moment. That judgment can't be improvised. It comes from understanding the problem, the field, the market and the situation your brand is in today.
That is precisely where all the difference lies for a brand strategy agency. It's also the part clients see least, even though it accounts for most of the time spent on a project: the thinking.
For almost a year, we worked with Kercia Solutions, the French leader in electronic voting, on the repositioning of its brand. The company was known through several sub-brands. To understand its market in depth, we spoke with its management, its employees and its clients, including La Poste and SNCF. At the end of this work, our recommendation was a bold one: drop a sub-brand that was very well known to the public, because it was overshadowing the main brand.
A decision like that commits a company deeply. It can't rest on intuition or on an agency's impression: it has to be grounded in facts. This work of understanding is what gives a recommendation its value, and it is also what makes a budget vary.
In practice, every project follows three stages. The audit first, to understand how the brand is perceived today. Then the DNA, to define how it should present and embody itself tomorrow, building on its history. Then the strategy, which connects the two: where you stand, where you want to go, what will work with your target clients and the actions that will get you there. We estimate the time each stage requires, and that estimate takes shape through our conversations with you.
It's the objection we hear most often, and it's a fair one: what is expensive for one company isn't necessarily expensive for another.
Take a joinery business that sells kitchens at around CHF 35,000. For them, a brand strategy that helps win over a few more clients quite quickly finds its place in the accounts. For a shop selling croissants or clothes, the same amount is a much bigger effort, and it's perfectly fair to ask whether a full strategy is really needed.
Offers at CHF 2,000 or 5,000 aren't absurd in themselves. For a small takeaway café in Lausanne, they can do the job perfectly well. For a service company selling at CHF 20,000 or 40,000 in a saturated market, that budget would obviously be too light.
Luxury takes this logic to the extreme. A brand aimed at a demanding clientele has to justify its price at every touchpoint. When it's under-invested, it struggles to create the trust that price requires, and this sector leaves very little room for approximation.
The return on a brand strategy is rarely measured in a few weeks. It shows over the medium term, and it can be read first in the field. Sales teams are often the first to notice it, because they are in direct contact with clients. At an insurer we worked with, they were the ones who confirmed that the new brand was resonating. That's why we recommend regularly going back to your teams and your clients to measure how the perception of your brand is evolving.
When the strategy is right, the effect is like a row of dominoes lining up. Marketing and communication know which direction to take. The client understands why the brand speaks to them, and the employee knows how to tell its story. The positioning becomes clearer, prices can be rethought, teams know why they work and the customer experience gains in consistency.
One cost is almost always underestimated: roll-out. When the strategy leads to a new identity, that identity then has to come to life everywhere. For the municipality of Chavannes-près-Renens, the new logo was applied to official documents, signage, posters, the town hall, road service vehicles and even the bins. A company with a fleet of vehicles or a sign on its building goes through exactly the same thing. That's why we like to raise this topic early with our clients, so that it is part of the thinking from the start and never becomes a bad surprise.
When we coordinate this roll-out with external partners, such as a printer, we take no commission on their work.
The other resource to plan for is management's time. A brand strategy requires several hours of exchanges with us, because nobody knows a company better than the people who run it. We run a company ourselves and we know how precious a leader's calendar is. So we organise these moments to be efficient and enjoyable, and to leave you with a clearer vision of your brand.
We sometimes advise against a brand strategy project. The question then isn't one of budget, but one of timing.
Take a physiotherapy practice launching with CHF 15,000 to fund everything: the strategy, the logo and the website. With that budget, it would be hard to cover each of these properly, and it's probably not yet the right moment to invest that much in its brand.
To an entrepreneur who is just starting out, we recommend drawing on the Lean Startup approach instead: test your product or service with simple brand elements, invest as little as possible at first and check that the market genuinely responds. A beautifully crafted brand can never make up for a product that doesn't find its audience. The right moment often comes when the company has found its market and enters a growth phase.
That's why we mainly work with established companies that have a history to grow, as well as brands launched by existing organisations, for example the innovation department of a large group that already has the means to make its new brand known.
There will always be a cheaper offer, and a more expensive one. Stopping at the budget is probably the most common mistake when choosing an agency.
For us, the most important criterion is the relationship between the company and the agency. A brand strategy is built together, over several months, and it requires genuine mutual trust. That's why we give ourselves the right to say no when we feel we're not the best placed for a project, when the chemistry isn't there or when our vision differs from the client's. In those cases, we prefer to say so openly and recommend a partner or another agency.
We apply the same openness when a company's resources don't match its ambitions. Rather than sending a proposal, we talk it through with them, and most of the time we find a solution that works for both sides.
Once the brand has been defined, launched or rethought, most companies value keeping an external strategic perspective to support this new direction. So we very often stay alongside our clients for about six months, in the role of brand strategist.
A brand strategy isn't bought like a product from a catalogue. Its cost reflects the time needed to understand your company and recommend the right direction, as well as the impact that direction will have on your revenue, your image and your teams.
30 minutes of honest conversation about your brand. No pitch, no sales, just a real discussion.
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