Your creative team.
Every month. On brand.
A named Kharaayo Studio team embedded in your marketing — producing consistent, brand-aligned creative output across every format you need, without the overhead of building an in-house creative department.
Producing for: ProLeap · [PLACEHOLDER — approved active retainer client names]
Not a bucket of hours. A committed creative team.
Most creative retainers work like a bank account with a monthly deposit: the client draws down hours, the agency tracks the balance, and everyone gets tense near the end of the month. The output is inconsistent because the scope is undefined. The relationship is transactional because the incentive is to fill hours, not to produce work.
Kharaayo’s Creative Retainer is built differently.
Every month, a named Kharaayo Studio team shows up for your brand with a committed output scope — agreed at the start of each month, tracked against delivery, reviewed at close. Not hours consumed. Work delivered.
The team knows your brand. They have your guidelines, your tone of voice document, your brand files, your previous work, and — after the first sprint cycle — your preferences, your approval patterns, and the specific things that make your CMO nervous. That accumulated knowledge is what makes the retainer accelerate rather than stagnate over time.
Committed output, not committed hours. Each month begins with an agreed creative scope: a number of deliverables across agreed formats. The team ships those deliverables. You’re not watching a clock.
Named creative leads. You know who is working on your brand. The same designer, the same motion artist, the same art director — every month. They build context. That context is the value.
Monthly rhythm with sprint cadence. Two-week sprints within each month. Brief → concept → feedback → final. Fast enough to respond to your market. Structured enough to produce finished work, not constant work-in-progress.
Brand in safe hands. Every piece produced within the retainer is reviewed against your brand system before delivery. Not “close enough.” On brand. Every time.
Month one is the slowest month.
In month one, the team is learning — your brand’s edge cases, your preference for visual density, the tone of voice that fits your CEO’s voice, what “on brand” means when the brief is vague. Good work comes out, but it takes more briefing and more rounds.
By month three, the team knows. Briefs get shorter. Feedback rounds shrink. The team anticipates what you need before you articulate it fully, because they’ve built a mental model of your brand that lives inside the relationship.
By month six, the retainer is running at a different speed entirely. A campaign brief that took a week of back-and-forth in month one takes a day. A social content batch that needed three rounds now comes back on target in one.
This is the compounding effect of creative context — and it only exists inside a sustained relationship. Project-by-project work resets to zero every time. The team has to rediscover your brand from the brief each engagement. You pay for that re-discovery in time, revision rounds, and creative output that never quite feels as effortless as it should.
Learning
More briefing, more rounds. Good work, but it takes effort.
Knowing
Briefs get shorter. Feedback rounds shrink. The compounding starts.
Flowing
A week of back-and-forth becomes a day. One round, on target.
Seamless
The team functions as an extension of your marketing.
The retainer model inverts the project model. The early months are an investment in context. The later months are where that investment pays out — in faster delivery, fewer rounds, more ambitious work, and a creative team that functions as an extension of your marketing rather than a vendor you manage from a distance.
Three months is the minimum not because of a contract requirement. It’s because three months is when the compounding starts.
What the retainer covers.
The Creative Retainer can cover any combination of these formats. Monthly scope is agreed from this menu — the mix adjusts as your needs change.
Social & Digital Content
Social media graphics, carousel posts, story assets, paid ad creatives, email header designs, newsletter layouts, and digital advertising across any platform. Produced to the brand system, optimized for the format.
Instagram, LinkedIn, X, YouTube thumbnails, Meta ads, Google Display, email.
Marketing & Campaign Assets
Campaign concepts and creative execution — launch campaigns, product promotion, awareness campaigns, event promotion, seasonal content. Brief-to-execution with the brand team.
Campaign concepts, key visuals, ad suites, landing page graphics, print-ready materials.
Product Marketing
Visual content that explains and promotes the product: feature announcements, changelog visuals, onboarding assets, UI screenshot treatments, comparison visuals — bridging product experience and brand.
Feature tiles, announcement graphics, product page assets, app store visuals.
Presentations & Investor Materials
Pitch decks, investor update slides, board presentations, conference decks, sales presentations, and partnership materials — designed to the brand system, built to communicate clearly under pressure.
Pitch decks, update decks, sales decks, presentation templates.
Motion & Video Content
Short-form motion for social and digital: animated social posts, story animations, short explainer clips, motion graphics for campaigns. Full production (longer videos, 3D, VFX) is a Motion, Video & VFX add-on.
Animated social content, short explainers, story animations, motion graphics.
Brand Management & Consistency
Ongoing brand stewardship: reviewing materials from internal teams or external partners, updating guidelines as the company evolves, producing new brand assets, and acting as the brand’s conscience within marketing.
Brand reviews, guideline updates, asset extensions, brand audits.
Monthly deliverable mix is agreed at the start of each month and adjusted each quarter as priorities shift. The retainer is not a fixed-format subscription — it’s a flexible creative function that follows your roadmap.
Transparent terms. Predictable output.
The Creative Retainer is structured to give both sides clarity — you know exactly what’s being delivered and what it costs, and the team knows exactly what they’re committed to.
Monthly retainer, sprint-based delivery.
Creative work runs in two-week sprints. Each sprint begins with an agreed brief and deliverable list. At close, finished work is delivered for review and approval. Feedback applied. Final assets delivered.
Committed output, not committed hours.
Each month’s scope is expressed as deliverables — a number of social assets, a campaign suite, a deck redesign — not as hours to consume. If the work takes longer than anticipated, that’s the team’s problem to solve, not yours.
Named creative leads.
Every retainer is staffed with named creatives. At onboarding you meet the art director, the designer, and any specialist on your account. The team does not rotate without discussion.
3-month minimum. Month-to-month after that.
The minimum exists because context takes time to build — the compounding starts at month three. After the initial 3 months, the retainer continues month-to-month with 30 days’ written notice. No exit fees.
Quarterly scope review.
Every quarter we review the deliverable mix against what’s actually been most useful. If your priorities shift — more motion and less social — we adjust scope for the next quarter. The retainer follows your roadmap, not a fixed format list.
Retainer tiers
[PLACEHOLDER — confirm pricing tiers with Daniel before launch. Market reference: senior creative retainers for international clients range $4,000–$15,000/month depending on output scope and team composition.] Exact scope and pricing confirmed at the Retainer Fit Call.
Included in every tier
- Named creative team with agreed composition
- Two-week sprint cadence with agreed deliverable scopes
- Monthly brief and creative direction session (30 minutes)
- Async feedback channel (Slack, email, or your tool)
- Quarterly scope review
- All final files delivered in agreed formats
- Brand file access and maintenance
Not included (pass-through)
- Stock photography or licensed imagery (billed at cost if required)
- Printing or physical production (if applicable)
- Paid media placements (creative only — not media buying)
- Extended motion or video beyond short-form scope (quoted via Motion, Video & VFX)
From fit call to first sprint in one week.
Retainer Fit Call30 minutes, free
A call to understand your brand, output needs, current creative situation, and team’s working style. What’s being produced now, what’s missing, what the monthly priorities are, what the brand constraints are. You meet the creative leads who would be on your account. If the fit is right, we propose a tier and first-month scope.
Brand ImmersionWeek 1
The creative team reviews every brand document, every previous piece of work, every approved asset in the archive. They note the edge cases, the exceptions, the things your guidelines don’t say but your CMO always flags.
No work is produced in Week 1. Context is built. The work produced in Week 2 reflects that context.
First SprintWeeks 2–3
Brief agreed, scope confirmed, work produced. First deliverables delivered at the end of Week 3. Review, feedback, finals.
Rhythm EstablishedMonth 2 onwards
Sprint cadence in place. The team knows your brand. Briefs get shorter. Feedback rounds shrink. By month three, the relationship is running at its intended pace.
This retainer is right for you if:
Right fit
- You have a brand and need consistent output to express it. Not a one-time campaign or single deck — a sustained need for brand-aligned creative work across multiple formats, every month.
- You want the same creative team every month. Named people who know your brand, not a rotating pool of freelancers who have to be re-briefed every engagement.
- You’re thinking in quarters, not projects. Your marketing has a roadmap: launches, campaigns, investor updates, content calendars. You need a creative function that moves with that roadmap.
- You’re done assembling a freelancer pool. Coordinating four freelancers with different quality standards, brand literacy, and availability is a job in itself. The retainer collapses that into one relationship.
- You’re an existing Kharaayo client. If we built your brand or website, the retainer is the natural next step. The team that built the system is the best team to operate it.
Not the right fit
- You have a one-time creative project. A single campaign, deck, or set of launch assets is a project brief, not a retainer need. We can quote it standalone, or start smaller and move to a retainer when the ongoing need is clearer.
- You don’t yet have a brand system. The retainer produces output within a brand system. Without one, the team has nothing to be consistent to. Start with a Brand Sprint → Brand Identity engagement, then move to a retainer.
- You need a retainer that runs without any client involvement. The retainer requires a brief at the start of each sprint, timely feedback at each review, and a designated point of contact. We produce great work; we can’t read minds.
Don’t have a brand system yet? Start with a Brand Sprint. Brand Identity & Strategy →
Need ongoing engineering output alongside creative? See Fractional AI Team. Fractional AI Team →
Creative output we’ve sustained.
A sample of ongoing creative output from active retainer relationships — across formats, over time.
ProLeap
Ongoing Creative Retainer — Education & Talent Platform. Sustained creative output: social content, campaign assets, enrollment marketing materials, event graphics, and investor update design — produced monthly to the ProLeap brand system.