Field Note 5: Service is black and white. Hospitality is colour.

From Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara:

“Service is black and white; hospitality is colour.”

Most businesses get the mechanics right. Very few make you feel something. That difference is where margin, loyalty and reputation live.

Most people read “hospitality is colour” and think it means adding fluff. So they throw in freebies. Overdo friendliness. Add noise where it is not needed.

That’s not the lesson.

The principle is about being intentional, instead of being louder or more generous.

The principle is designing how someone feels when they work with you. There’s a difference between adding extras and elevating the experience.

Black and white is process. Colour is meaning.

Hospitality is how the client feels on the journey. The clarity in the email. The calm in a tense meeting. The confidence they walk away with.

I now ask myself before any big interaction:

"Am I just delivering the work, or am I designing the experience?"

I once ran a pitch for a global fitness brand. We were up against an incumbent agency who knew the business inside out, and another shop with an arguably stronger creative reputation than ours.

We nearly didn't enter. The safe bet was to let it go.

We decided to give it a crack anyway.

But we decided to do things a little differently.

Before pitch day, I set up a coffee between the CMO and our CEO. Not a sales meeting. Just the two of them. One-on-one. No agenda, no deck. Just a conversation so they could connect as people, not roles.

Our CEO wasn't even involved in the pitch itself. But that coffee mattered. It built trust before we'd earned the right to it.

Then came pitch day.

Typically, agencies introduce their team with titles and credentials. We did something else.

Every person on our team had signed up for a free trial at one of their gyms. We'd worked out there. Experienced it as customers. Left real reviews online.

When we introduced ourselves, the slides didn't show AI-polished LinkedIn headshots. They showed selfies we'd taken at their gyms. Sweaty. Mid-workout. Real.

Some advertising people reading this probably thought it was a gimmick. It wasn't. It was a signal to show we'd done the work to understand what their customers actually experience.

The pitch itself went well. Strong thinking. Clear strategy. Good conversation.

But when the call came through that we'd won, I was slightly surprised.

So I asked the CMO directly, "Why did you choose us?"

She said, "It was the way you guys made me feel heard."

Not the strategy. Not the creative. The feeling.

We designed an experience that showed we cared before the meeting even started.

That's the difference between service and hospitality.

Service is showing up prepared and doing what's asked of you.

Hospitality is making someone feel like you're already a part of their team.

Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

Murph