Simple Always Wins: The Story Behind 'Speaking in Color'

I remember staring at the 17-foot screen thinking, "It's so beautiful, so mesmerizing—damn, we might be on to something." A year earlier, our client, Sherwin-Williams Coil & Extrusion, had tasked us with creating a campaign and platform for the architectural market. Its coatings cover all manner of metal architectural elements, from aluminum cladding around windows to full sweeps of colored panels, giving form and personality to function. At the time, Sherwin-Williams’ brand was better known for interior paint, not a go-to architectural solution. Our task was to connect Sherwin-Williams’ obsession with color creation to architects’ obsession with how color changes and enhances the environment of their buildings and the lives of people who use them. But if we’re going to promise obsession, we have to deliver obsession. Here Are All 27 Campaigns That Won Top Honors at the 2022 Cannes Lions As I watched the full-scale installation of "Thinking in Color," I knew we had done just that. By measuring the activity of the alpha, theta, beta and gamma brain waves of an individual, we interpreted them onto the massive screen in a magical data visualization. One architect after the next left the experience in awe, with excitement and with questions: What does it mean? What color did I create? How was it created? As amazing as it was to experience, we knew what these creatives were after—“The One.” The formula for their perfect color. Inspiration without utility is a wasted opportunity Two new ideas sprang from the success of "Thinking in Color" and the utility challenge it revealed. The first, and most ambitious, was Speaking in Color—an AI-powered, voice-controlled tool for exploring personalized color options. It was unfortunately too ambitious: We had way more ideas than available technology could enable, and the project was shelved. Restriction created refinement, and limitations created focus. Fortunately, the team was already working on our second idea, Color Mixology. By attaching lidar sensors to digital display panels, the bespoke UI allowed users to add colors that moved with the viscosity, reflectiveness and metallic properties of the coatings on a 10-foot-by-10-foot screen. Color Mixology debuted in Las Vegas at the largest architectural trade show in the world, the American Institute of Architects' Conference on Architecture. Everything worked perfectly, everyone created a color—but was it The One? Turns out it wasn’t. The starting point, a color picker, was too familiar and uninspiring. Exploration needs both intention and emotion—it cannot be a straight line. If it is, you have not explored, and without exploration it has less meaning. We had lost the magic in pursuit of the utility. Emotion amplifies rational experience Even if we had not pulled it all together yet, after both experiences, architects had started to see Sherwin-Williams as the color-obsessed experts they are. We kept working on "Speaking in Color" without a brief or budget. We simplified it, as simple always wins. And soon, the technology we needed to meet the demands of our vision became available to produce a prototype. By using voice-powered image search, "Speaking in Color" starts exploring color from any thought or inspiration you have—the more unique, the better. Images returned from the search are analyzed to create a palette of the most common colors found. UFC Weaponizes Fonts and Color Palettes Into a Potent One-Two Punch The experience was both intuitive and utilized readily available technology like voice, image search and pixel color analysis. The innovation came in the combination and sequence of how they were used, plus the secret sauce our creative technology team developed to refine the color through voice. We shared the prototype with our client at the end of a normal business review, ala Steve Jobs’ One More Thing. Our primary client, who had been on the journey with us since the beginning, was in attendance. When asked to describe the color of his dreams, he responded: “Tahitian blue ocean.” Instantly, imagery of vacations, resorts, fishermen, coral, snorkeling and that crystalline blue ocean filled the conference room screen. We could feel the client’s immediate excitement. Everyone took a turn, each of them amazed at how fun and surprising it was. Even when a senior client tried to trick the system with “the Cleveland Browns”—home team of Sherwin-Williams' Cleveland headquarters—the system returned the pumpkin orange color of their helmets, not a brown as the name suggests. We were off and running. Nothing sells an idea like a prototype—and a bit of luck Now came the trickiest part of any big idea: keeping it alive. Legal, finance, technology, IP attorneys, sales teams, divisional partners, more lawyers and executives of all levels weighed in. By no means did this sail through, but thanks to brave clients who brought smarts, problem-solving and passion for the idea, "Speaking in Color" never faded. It only got stronger. Creativity to Aid Citizens: The Story Behind ‘Backup Ukraine’ Every iteration, push and tweak brought together a greater balance between the emotional inspiration and the utility of finding The One. Restriction created refinement, and limitations created focus—all leading to a balance between the emotional and rational connection to create a formula that would win us the first-ever Creative B2B Grand Prix given out at Cannes Lions. Getting to this point was not easy. We failed a lot. But every failure was a learning and every setback a reframe. A client with a vision and a tenacious, curious and talented team brought it all together.