Say the price out loud

You can tell a lot about a company by how it behaves around its own price. The confident ones state it plainly and move on. The unsure ones bury it, gate it behind a form, surround it with justification, or avoid the subject until the last possible moment.

Price is the clearest thing a brand ever says about itself. It is a claim about worth, made in public, that the whole experience then has to honour. A company that is nervous about its price is really telling you it is not sure the claim is true — and customers feel that hesitation long before they see a number.

The work of brand is, in large part, the work of earning the right to a price and then having the nerve to name it. When the position is sharp and the experience is whole, the number stops feeling like a risk and starts feeling like a fact. Nothing signals confidence like a company that will simply tell you what it costs.

If you cannot say the price out loud, the problem is rarely the price.