The oat milk I buy went from $4.49 to $5.29 sometime in the last month, and I know because I stood in the New Seasons aisle doing arithmetic like a person with nowhere to be. Same carton. Same oats. Eighty cents.
The Fed raised rates half a point on Wednesday, the largest single move since 2000, because prices are climbing faster than they have in four decades. Every client I talk to is having the pricing conversation this month, in a finance meeting the brand team is not invited to.
That is the mistake.
A price change is the loudest piece of brand communication you will ship this year, and most companies let it get written by accident.
Customers read the shelf tag more carefully than they read anything your agency made. They see it weekly, in the exact moment they are deciding whether you are worth it. No campaign in the world gets that much attention in that much context.
The question is not whether to raise prices. Sometimes you have to. The question is what the increase says, because it is going to say something.
One. Silence says you hoped nobody would notice. People notice, and the story becomes that you tried to sneak it past them. Shrinkflation is the purest version of this. Fewer chips, same bag, same price, and a customer who now believes you think they are stupid.
Two. A reason says you respect the person paying. Not a paragraph about macroeconomic headwinds. A sentence a human being would actually say. Our flour costs more, so we cost more. Costco has held that hot dog at a dollar fifty for decades and everyone knows it, which tells you how closely people track this.
Three. The increase has to match what you already claim. Patagonia can charge more because it has spent fifty years saying the jacket should outlive you. Salt & Straw can charge Portland ice cream money because the work is visible in the case every month. If your entire brand is value and you raise the price without changing anything about the product, you have not raised a price. You have contradicted yourself in public.
Customers read the shelf tag more carefully than they read anything your agency made.
I have watched this from inside brand strategy rooms. Pricing lands as a done deal on a Tuesday and the brand team gets asked to write the announcement on a Thursday. By then the message has already been sent. All anyone is doing at that point is writing the caption.
I bought the oat milk anyway. Of course I did. I make coffee for a household of three, two of whom are cats, and eighty cents was never the point. The point is that nobody told me why, so I invented a reason on the walk home, and mine was worse than anything they would have written.