Escaping “Brand Beige”

There’s a color palette taking over modern marketing & it isn’t Mocha Mousse. It’s less exciting. It’s Beige.

Not literally, but conceptually. Scroll through any social platform & you’ll see it: brands producing interchangeable content, indistinguishable from each other, all dressed in safe formatting but stripped of originality. This is what we call Brand Beige, the predictable, forgettable byproduct of short-termism & misplaced priorities.

First, there’s an overreliance on data. Everything is being treated as a performance metric, with insights drawn from massive, muddied data sets that lack nuance. Instead of uncovering sharper truths, we end up with generalized outputs that flatten brand distinctiveness. Mark Zuckerberg, arguably (or inarguably depending on who you ask) the least creative person on the planet (remember, this is a guy who renamed his company Meta & famously “borrowed” the trillion-dollar Facebook idea from the Winklevoss twins) recently proclaimed that all Meta paid ads will be AI-generated by the end of next year. One giant model, one centralized dataset, churning out “best practices.” What could possibly go wrong when the entire industry produces homogenous outputs with no regard for audience nuance or brand differentiation (we really need a sarcasm font)?

Second, there’s an obsession with immediacy. Instead of investing in original creative based on strong audience insights, brands are rushing to appropriate trends wholesale, chasing culture rather than shaping it. The result? Tone-deaf executions that show no brand perspective, an obvious lack of creative capital investment, & certainly no market differentiation. By simply recreating the trend of the moment, brands aren’t riding the wave, they’re drowning in Brand Beige.

Our perspective is straightforward: trends aren’t inherently bad. But brands should scrutinize them against their ethos & ask, “What does our version of this look like?” A trend without a brand-forward spin is just borrowed relevance, & borrowed relevance expires quickly.

Playing it safe feels like risk management. But in reality, it’s the opposite. Joining the Brand Beige world doesn’t just make your brand harder to notice, it makes you easier to ignore. When every brand is telling the same story in the same voice with the same visuals, the one that dares to break pattern is the one people remember.

Consumers don’t remember the safe campaigns. They remember the ones that took a creative risk, expressed a clear point of view, or even provoked debate. Being ignored is a bigger business risk than being polarizing.

Escaping Brand Beige doesn’t mean ignoring performance or trends. It means re-centering creative as the differentiator:

– Make Noise, Not Nods – Don’t settle for content that earns polite approval. Aim for work that sparks attention, emotion, or conversation

– Originals Don’t Drift – Keep your brand voice steady, even as formats shift. Adapt the how, not the who

– Invest in Creative Craft – Templates may save time, but they also sap soul. Prioritize craft, distinct visuals, and writing that could only come from your brand

– Challenge “Best Practices” – They’re best for average brands. Don’t just follow what works across the industry. Rather, question whether it works for your brand

As Warren Buffett famously said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.” That principle applies directly to brand building. Each creative choice that reinforces your identity & distinguishes you from competitors builds equity over time. Distinctive campaigns stack, recognition grows, & the long-term payoff becomes far greater than the fleeting bump of engagement. Consistency with originality compounds into an identity competitors can’t replicate.

Brand Beige is the path of least resistance. But the easy path rarely leads to impact. In an era when every brand can crank out content at scale, the real moat is creative bravery. Because safe won’t be remembered. Bold will.

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Clayton is a strategist & innovation leader who lives at the intersection of brand, performance & technology, channeling an engineer’s curiosity into advertising by constantly prototyping new ideas & pushing teams to imagine what’s possible. Off the click, he gravitates to sports, tech tinkering, & the maker’s world of art, all different forms of the same impulse to refine, iterate & surprise.