Could selling a brand without a product to marketers be the next big thing for design agencies? One such agency in the US is pioneering the idea, charging a single flat fee of $18,000 for designing a brand identity before a product, service or target market has even been considered.

With the concept engineered by Ben Pieratt, identity/product designer and co-founder of social shopping site Svpply, the goal of ‘Hessian‘, is to design an effective brand identity before a client has even entered the fray.

Within the fee to future-clients, the package includes a comprehensive marketing ensemble of wares: a Hessian URL, Twitter and Tumblr accounts, image assets, an app interface – plus 30 hours of design time to customise Hessian to the buyer’s needs.

Pieratt’s idea is in direct response to the ‘backwards’ approach to the conventional workflow of brand research between client and designer and aims to place brand as hero over product.

But the ultimate goal is to put designers on an equal grounding with clients, with, as Pieratt explains: “designers becoming entrepreneurs in their own right”, before quoting the revered designer behind Coca-Cola, Walter Landor, who stated: “Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind”.