The Price is Right?

Review of our Ride the Wave workshop on pricing within the creative industry.

The Basement in Kensington Street, Brighton, which showcases contemporary performance and art, welcomed a mix of creative talent last week for The Price is Right: a free workshop hosted by Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce targeted at those working in the creative sector.

Funded by Brighton and Hove City Council, the event was part of this year’s Ride the Wave programme; a programme which aims to support organisations of all sizes through a series of free workshops.

Popularly known as the game show where contestants had to guess the price of products, The Price is Right aimed to tackle how much creatives should be selling their services, products and/ or time.

Packed round six tables, copywriters, artists, photographers, web designers, florists, interior designers and many more gathered to hear Julia Chanteray, President of the Chamber and director of The Joy of Business, impart with her business expertise and receive advice from money gurus Carol Lewis and Danni Craker.

Heralded by Fay MacDonald, who created the event, as a woman who ‘knows some serious stuff about money,’ Julia began by warming up the audience. “Stand up if you’re a copywriter,” said Julia – just four.

“Stand up if you’re Journalist,” said Julia – just one. As a student from Journalist Works the event was my chance to meet other creative individuals and learn more about the Chamber.

With a mix of tasks and witty, motivational discussions come anecdotes, the event made a topic which many dread fun and interesting.
First of all, each table was asked to estimate the price of pens hidden in a ‘secret envelope.’ Playing on the roots of the game show the task highlighted just how difficult it is to estimate the price of a product.

Carol Lewis was then on hand to talk more about money. Sales, cost of sales, gross profit, overheads and net profit: the key components of an average cashflow explained. 

Put simply pricing was described as a marketing issue - the more marketing you do the more you can charge and the more time to have for marketing the more clients you have.

With this in mind, the tables turned once again to the audience. Each individual had to calculate their survival income, what they want to earn and how many billable days they worked in a year. This was also a prime opportunity to find out what others were charging.

The talk soon began to focus on pricing strategies including marking up, up-selling and discounting.

Should we offer mates rates? Should we double our prices when in London? Were just a few of the questions the discussion raised.

By the end of the talk Julia’s message was clear. Have plenty of can do attitude, don’t be afraid to change your prices and do what you need before giving a quote: stand in front of the mirror, eat chocolate or promise yourself chocolate afterwards.

“What you need to do is get better. Being good means you feel you can put your prices up. Put your prices to where they should be,” said Julia.

The event was a resounding success. When asked what they liked about the event, members of the audience said the night was:

• “Interesting and thought provoking.”
• “lively and informative.”
• “wasn’t just theory, but the real life tips on how to price and what things to try.”
• “Educational, fun and Julia was excellent.”

Julia said: “It was lovely to see all these creative businesses getting serious about their pricing models, and really thinking about what they should be pricing at.  I could definitely see some “a-ha” moments going on around the room, so I’m hoping that people are able to really change their pricing and the way they do business.”

Blog by Rachel O'Brien, Brighton Journalist Works

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk