I feel sorry for any designer who doesn’t believe design adds value to the growth potential of a business.

So you believe design is a commodity that anyone can provide? Thus the price should be the same for every company since it won’t affect their bottom line?

Zara is a fashion company. Their brand is literally what they sell.

I know we have a lot of younger folks on DN, so here’s a lesson for the downvoters: a global rebrand of a company the size of Zara is not just about firing up illustrator and creating the logo. That’s maybe 1% of it. The strategy, collateral impact across stores/countries/branded pieces and actual process of flying across the globe and getting a corporate beaurocracy with 10,000+ Ass-covering employees and execs to agree on this thing is the 99%.

Even on an hours billed/commodity model, $100k would be pretty cheap. That’s around what a non-profit museum with one location in NYC would pay for a rebrand.

I’d guess $100k was the travel expenses alone on this project (not just on the agency side, but from Zara’s team as well) depending on how many stakeholder meetings were required and meetings across internal departments.

You charge based on value provided, so it's not arbitrary. If you don't charge by value you're stuck making $200 logos, because it takes you 4 hours or something.

I'd honestly hope that a respectable design company wouldn't arbitrarily inflate the price for some customers just based on their perceived corporate value.

That is exactly the basis that you should adjust pricing around. Design is perception. Perception is value. Zara's logo is valuable to them because it theirs and not someone else's.

It is a direct representation of their brand. So while the perceived value may feel arbitrary to anyone outside of the brand, the price paid is a reflection of that value and not just that of the hours or resources that went into creating it

I would charge them as much as they could possibly bear and that I could justify. It would be insane to do otherwise.