How much should an idea cost?

Ideas are slippery little suckers. Sometimes they arrive effortlessly while you’re in the information zone, as if by osmosis. Other times they bob around like jelly in an oil slick — you get occasional glimpses of their glittering potential but it takes slow, painstaking work to extract them from the sludge.

So how do you put a price on this part of the creative process?

With great difficulty. When Amy and I are putting together an estimate on a project, I can almost pinpoint the moment when her will to live floats from her body as I work through the twentieth possible way it could come to life.

‘How can we tell them what it’ll cost when we don’t have the idea yet?’ I wail.

‘We have to give them something,’ Amy whimpers.

And really, that’s the point. Every challenge has many potential creative solutions.

There’s always an idea that will fit, no matter how particular the set of needs or restrictive the boundaries.

What’s important is finding the right idea for each project’s needs and budget. The idea that tells the story the most impactful way, that helps people, that gives them goosebumps or giggles – regardless of what the cost parameters might be.

Which is why we developed The Dream Room. It’s an ideation process honed over years of working in all kinds of creative environments. A process that allows thinking to flourish without restriction for every project before the nuts and bolts of logistical realities kick in.

Things might get silly or stoic or fall down rabbit holes along the way. But when they make it back to the original brief, they are a lot more vibrant for all that noodling.

Instead of simply trading in billable hours, we approach every project with a plan of how it will move through the Dream Room.

We might not know what the final idea looks like yet but we do know it will get all the care it needs to rise like a jelly phoenix from the oil slick of your dreams.