Beige is not a colour.

The launch.

Dries Henau and Yuri Vandenbogaerde are The Brand Guys, a Belgian studio for hospitality brands and concepts. Before that, they started and sold WASBAR, a laundromat with a café, and Chez Claire, an éclair shop.

Their book Fight the Average was voted Marketing Book of the Year 2025 in Belgium. In it, they make a simple point:

Beige is not a colour.

Then I walked into their book launch dressed almost entirely in beige.

They are friends, so I assume they enjoyed that more than they should have.

Beige as a strategy.

They were not really writing about trousers, of course. They were writing about brands that try so hard not to offend anyone that they stop giving anyone a reason to care.

Beige is what happens when every sharp edge gets sanded down. When research replaces judgement. When “what people expect” becomes more important than what you believe.

The result may look polished. It may test well. It may even win internal approval.

It is also easy to ignore.

This is the trap in most conversations about differentiation. Teams search for a different colour, slogan or visual style. But a distinctive brand is rarely created in the design round. It is created much earlier, through choices.

• Which customers do you prioritise?
• What do you refuse to do?
• Where are you willing to make the experience less efficient because it makes it more human?
• What can customers point at and say: only this company would do that?

That is why acts matter more than ads. Advertising can claim that a brand is bold, generous or rebellious. Behaviour has to prove it.

A hotel that gives guests a secret password is making a choice. A company that lets frontline staff solve a problem without asking permission is making a choice. A brand that says no to a profitable but wrong customer is making a choice.

Those choices may divide opinion. Good. Beige rarely does.

There is nothing wrong with the colour itself. I still wear it. The problem starts when beige becomes a strategy: safe enough for everyone, memorable to no one.

The opposite of average is not loud. It is specific.

Fight the Average by Dries Henau and Yuri Vandenbogaerde (Lannoo Campus). First written in September 2026. Photo: my own.