Research commissioned by paint brand Behr found that 40% of home improvement shoppers call choosing a color the hardest step of a project — and 40% don't start a project at all because they can't decide. Andy Lopez, recently elevated to chief marketing officer, has a name for it: "paint paralysis." In a Marketing Dive interview, he laid out how Behr's accelerated digital transformation is built around dissolving it.
This spring, Behr launched a campaign urging people to call a hotline where popular real estate and DIY influencers answered paint and project questions. Five influencers — some with millions of followers — appeared in a video holding phones against colorful backdrops: "Let's be honest… You have painting questions." The video drew over 13,000 likes, and more than 3,400 people actually called. The mechanic rode the nostalgia trend on Instagram and TikTok — a throwback to simpler times — but converted the wink into genuine utility.
The second axis is ChatHue, an AI agent built with Google Cloud on Behr's proprietary color data, launched in July 2025. In March, Behr added visualization so shoppers can see colors in real-world spaces instead of text-only guidance — a change that lifted customer satisfaction 15%. Lopez's framing matters: ChatHue isn't meant to solve every color problem. It targets one specific pain point — narrowing the decision and making shoppers feel confident about their choice.
Behr recently relaunched its website, converting a standard e-commerce site into a "color destination" while shifting e-commerce transactions to exclusive partner The Home Depot's site and stores. Lopez's operating principle is that marketing, product strategy, R&D, finance, sales, and Home Depot all need to work from the same understanding of the consumer — that's when better decisions, stronger innovation, and seamless experiences from development through purchase follow. The audience is evolving too: more millennial and Gen Z consumers entering the home market, and notable growth among Hispanic audiences taking on projects.
The transferable lesson isn't AI adoption — it's problem definition. Behr didn't start from "sell more paint"; it started from why customers fail to start, confirmed with data that the blocker was decision cost rather than product, and only then attached tools. Targeting the customer's decision paralysis instead of the catalog is structurally identical to the case in Daiso Didn't Sell Cheap Goods — It Sold Five Minutes Without a Decision: more choice looks like more sales, but in practice choice creates paralysis and paralysis blocks revenue.
ChatHue's foundation matters too. It's built on Behr's proprietary color data, not a generic chatbot — which makes it hard to copy, echoing the conclusion of What Socar and Samjjeomsam Learned the Hard Way — the AI Gap Is Accumulation, Not Tools. If you're weighing AI investments, the sequence is: identify the single point where customers stall, then solve that point with data only you have.
Behr's CMO's term for shoppers frozen by color choice. In Behr-commissioned research, 40% of respondents called color selection the hardest step, and 40% said the inability to decide stops them from starting a project at all.
An AI color-guidance agent Behr built with Google Cloud on its proprietary color data, launched in July 2025. Adding real-space color visualization in March lifted customer satisfaction by 15%.
The launch video drew over 13,000 likes and more than 3,400 real calls to the hotline — nostalgia as a hook, genuine help as the payoff.
Define the problem before choosing the tool: find the single point where customers stall, verify it with data, then solve it with proprietary data a competitor can't copy — rather than deploying a generic AI for its own sake.
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