Why market research can be a good thing, or, it's not easy being green

Last year around this time, my office spent a good few weeks attempting to choose a color palette for our new spa. After our designer submitted a basic brand identity system, we decided to make our logo green, in part to represent our products' natural ingredients, but also because green would stand out in a market mainly saturated with copycats of boring-blue Bliss.

Our company's president, our brand development VP, and myself, all agreed upon our favorite green early on. But then the other president jumped in, asked to see about 20 additional variations of the green we chose, and frustration ensued. Every day he had a new opinion. The wall next to my office became wallpapered with options, swatches of greens in every PMS shade available.

(Aside: Once, when I was like, 8, I asked my mother, who was an art director, why all of her markers had PMS.)

For weeks we went in circles, weighing why one hue might be better than the next; why one green was too blah and boring, another one too shocking. We dissected green as if it were literally a frog in seventh grade biology, picking apart every nuance until we could no longer recognize the beast at all. In the end, weeks after the process began and a day away from our printing deadline, the president decided he liked the initial green color the rest of us had recommended in the first place.

Imagine my dismay this weekend when I took my taxes to H&R Block and recognized their logo color as unfortunately familiar.