Risograph print inspired by Brett Archibald
A cross-functional color decision won on brand strategy rather than taste.
A marketing colleague came to me with a reasonable position. We were introducing a new class of AI features and needed a color to carry them. Mint green was already in the palette and already approved. Picking it would have ended the conversation in a single meeting.
We argued for purple instead. Purple was not currently part of the brand palette. On its face that made it the harder sell, the one that invites “why are we deviating from brand?”
The move that changed the energy in the room was refusing to argue on taste. We didn’t claim purple looked better. We argued that purple was a missing dimension in the palette, not a departure from it. The existing colors covered everything the brand already did. None of them carried the thing the brand was about to become. Choosing purple wasn’t decoration on top of the system. It completed the system.
That reframe shifted who had to defend what. Mint green stopped being the safe option and became the option that quietly signaled the new capability was just more of the same. Purple stopped being the risky deviation and became the deliberate marker of a new category of work. Our CPO and CMO both signed off.
I keep this one because it’s a clean example of a pattern that decides a lot of cross-functional fights. Taste arguments are unwinnable. Everyone’s taste is valid, so the most senior taste in the room wins by default. Strategy arguments have a different shape. They appeal to something outside the people in the room: what the brand is for, where the product is going, what the customer will need to recognize a year from now. When you can move a decision from “which do you prefer” to “which one is true to where we’re headed,” you change who carries the burden of proof.
The color was never the point. The point was that we made marketing’s safe choice look like the strategic risk, and we did it without saying a word about aesthetics.