What a media strategy engagement includes

A media strategy engagement, priced from $5,000 ex GST, settles four things before anyone books a shoot: who each video is for, the one thing it has to say, where it will actually be seen, and what it should make the viewer do next. It's research, a workshop and a written plan, not a mood board and not a production booking.

Most businesses that come to us have already tried to skip this step once. They've booked a videographer, filmed something that looked good on the day, and struggled to point to what it actually changed six months later. A strategy engagement exists to catch that mistake before it costs a production budget, not after.

Research, before the workshop happens

We start by understanding where the business actually is: what's converting already, where the gaps are, and what video would genuinely move rather than just decorate. That might mean looking at existing sales conversations, current website performance, or simply talking through what's working and what isn't. This is deliberately not a generic industry template. The plan that comes out the other end has to fit your business, not a category of business that looks similar from a distance.

The workshop itself

The session settles the four things every later decision depends on. Audience: who this is for, and how that specific buyer actually decides. Message: the one thing each video has to land, not five things competing for the same thirty seconds. Channels: where the audience will actually see it, because that governs length, framing and format long before a camera is booked. Calls to action: what each video should make the viewer do next, and at what point in their decision that action sits. We've written more on how that session actually runs in what happens in a video strategy workshop, which is the fuller version of the thinking behind this step.

The document you keep either way

The output is a written plan: which videos to build, in what order, for which platforms, with what call to action, and how you'll know each one worked. It's built to hold up whoever ends up producing it, which means the strategy is yours to keep even if you don't go on to film with us. That's a deliberate part of how we price it. You're not paying $5,000 for access to a production slot. You're paying for a plan that stands on its own.

How it feeds into production, if you go ahead

If you do move into production afterwards, the strategy work folds straight into the budgeting rather than being redone. That's part of why a retainer's first month is set aside for exactly this: strategy first, then the ongoing production runs from a settled plan rather than a running list of requests decided on the fly. For a project engagement, a smaller, scoped version of the same thinking sits inside the pre-production phase of the quote. Either way, the shoot day gets calmer because the decisions were already made on paper. We cover the full pricing picture, including how strategy sits alongside single projects and retainers, on our strategy page.

Why it's priced separately from production

Pricing the strategy work on its own, rather than bundling it invisibly into a production quote, is a deliberate choice. It means the plan gets judged on its own merits rather than treated as a formality on the way to a shoot booking. It also means a business that needs the thinking but isn't ready to spend on production yet has a genuine, complete option, not a stripped-down version of something else. Distribution planning sits inside this engagement too: where each video lives, how often it's re-posted, and what it's cut into once it's up, because a plan that stops at the shoot doesn't cover the part of the return that actually compounds.

Who this suits

A standalone strategy engagement suits a business that isn't ready to commit to production yet but wants the thinking done properly first, or one that's filmed video before without a real plan and wants the next round to actually work. It also suits a business planning its video spend for the year ahead, where the document becomes the reference point for every budget conversation that follows. If that's you, budgeting video across a financial year covers how that planning tends to play out in practice.

If you'd like to talk through whether a standalone strategy session is the right starting point for you, get in touch and we'll walk through where your business actually is.