Slatelock productized retainers are flat for a reason — the envelope keeps the monthly fee honest. When a brief stops fitting the envelope, the cleanest move is a custom engagement: same flat-billing discipline, sized to the brief, no hourly meter, no upsell pressure. This page reads out loud what that move looks like.
The tiers at /pricing are the entry point; this page documents the move beyond them — not a hard pitch, a map of the door.
Who this is for
Nothing here is hidden — the package has a fixed envelope on purpose, and the brief drifts at the edges. These are the four patterns Slatelock treats as a named engagement rather than a wider tier.
Multi-location
A regional franchise, a multi-city service business, a buyer with a footprint that no longer reads as a single market. The envelope assumes one location, one audience, one cadence — the moment the brief has more than one, the package is no longer the right frame.
In-house marketing team
A team already owns the strategy and the calendar. They need a named operator to ship the artifact against the brief — landing pages, ads, copy, theme work — without pulling the team off the higher-leverage work.
Launch campaign
A product launch, a rebrand going live on a fixed date, a seasonal push the calendar is built around. The work has a finish line, not a renewal. The productized tiers are designed for monthly artifact cadence — a launch wants scoped work with a hard close.
~$3k+/mo spend
Once media is passing through at that volume, the marginal value of another productized tier is the wrong axis. The right move is a custom engagement sized against the brief — the spend is the input, the artifact is the output, the fee covers the operator.
If none of the four landed on you, the right move is the package — re-read /pricing and the tiers it stocks. The custom engagement is the documented next step, not the first step.
What changes, what does not
The productized tiers are flat because the artifact is fixed. A custom engagement is flat because the brief is fixed. The fee, the cancellation, the reporting cadence — all are answered up front, on the same terms the productized tiers run on. The shape changes. The billing discipline does not.
What changes when the brief outgrows the envelope
What stays the same
Same flat-billing discipline, same weekly report cadence, same one-page register — just sized to the inputs.
What graduation looks like
The graduation is the moment the package stops being the right frame and a custom engagement starts being the right answer. It runs on a single SoW — the artifact, the cadence, the fee, the cancellation terms — sized against the brief, scoped from the first call.
Sample statement of work — one page
01
A 30-minute read on the brief, the inputs, and the close-out date. No deck, no scoping document, no "let us put a proposal together." The outcome of the call is either a yes, a no, or a pointer back to the productized tier.
02
A one-page SoW: the artifact, the cadence, the fee, the cancellation terms. The brief, not the relationship, is the scope. The same flat-billing discipline the /pricing tiers run on — without the tier envelope.
03
A custom engagement is sized against a brief with a clear finish line. When the artifacts ship, the engagement closes. The buyer keeps the files on the close-out date — no hand-off period, no "let us keep going."
FAQ
Scoping, discovery, the SoW, the close-out date. Six quick answers in the same shape as the rest of the site's FAQs.
Send a brief, get a reply
The intake is the brief itself — what shipped this month, and which of the four signals on this page applies. Same-week reply: a yes, a no, or a pointer back to the productized tier that fits.
Questions? Email slatelock@polsia.app. Slatelock is productized marketing retainers with a clear deliverable, every month. built for small businesses who can't justify a $3,000-plus agency engagement.