What does it mean to have good taste? 

It’s something that is thrown around quite regularly, and also something that people already “think” they have. Everyone claims it, but few can define it. Our robots can mimic it, but they can’t FEEL it. 

And I’m just not sure how to define it, but I know one thing… FEELING MATTERS. 

And B2B marketing is terrible at feeling, and I’m terrified that the “sameness epidemic” in B2B is becoming our default setting. So let’s start f’in around and define good taste. 

So, let’s get back to the question. What does it mean to have good taste? 

Let me digress for a second. I have Kristian Andersen to blame for my constant worrying about the definition of good taste. 

If you don’t know Kristian, let me explain why. He is the kind of person who refuses to let anyone hide behind the idea that “taste is subjective.” For him, it’s intentionality, standards, and sweating that last 10%. Talking with him just made the whole subject more annoying for me, because I realized the idea of taste is not abstract for me. 

I believe I have good taste in marketing. It’s the inner filter (or gut instinct) I’ve leaned on for years, whether I’m reviewing design for a campaign, editing a deck, or rewriting positioning. The more I dig into it, the more I see taste as the throughline between creativity, leadership, and building work that actually lasts. 

So, who helps me think about taste other than my friend, Kristian? A group of people who couldn’t be more different from one another, and who all have delivered good taste in their respective domains, and just happen to be front and center in my head atm: 

• Rick Rubin — He’s the legendary producer who openly admits he can’t play an instrument. What he can do is notice what moves him and have the conviction to trust it. That’s his instrument. Rubin reminds us that taste isn’t technical mastery—it’s clarity of feeling.

• Ira Glass - The voice of This American Life, who explained that every creative begins with a gap between their taste and their skill, and that noticing is what drives you forward.

• Adam Singer — There are very few people whom I would crown a marketing expert, and Adam is one of them. Whether it’s “enshittifcation” or the “soulless blandscape” of logos and campaigns designed by committee, Adam is one of my generation's expert on good taste in B2B. He argues taste requires risk, and the riskiest move right now is to be boring.

• Sarah Guo — The original taste master! She wrote the modern manifesto for taste in startups. For Guo, taste is coherence encoded in ten thousand decisions. Real taste costs something. It means saying no to what’s easy to protect what’s important.

• Rob Mills — I stumbled across Rob Mills while scrolling Facebook (as one does when looking for inspiration). The algorithm eventually identified me as someone who loves architecture and modern design. Rob’s thoughts on design, architecture, and taste are redefining luxury as a harmonious blend of performance and serenity. For Rob, the true taste is craftsmanship that lasts, spaces that invite you to linger, homes that sustain themselves without shouting for attention.

• Bill Bernbach — I have Kristian to thank for the reintroduction to Bill. I was familiar with him because of the craft, but I hadn’t spent a ton of time reading about him. Bill is an advertising legend who, back in 1947, warned against “worshiping ritual instead of God.” He saw how formulas stifled creativity, and he staked his career on proving that good taste, good art, and good writing could be effective selling tools. His letter, penned almost 80 years ago, could just as easily be read as a critique of the way marketing is done today.

• Kristian Andersen — Last but not least, I’ve known Kristian for years. We attended the same college, and he has been a fixture in the Indianapolis startup scene for over 15 years. To him, everything is designed, either by you or for you. Good taste is intentional, holistic, anchored in purpose, and revealed in the extra mile most people don’t bother to take.

Different strokes for different folks spanning decades and different fields. But the same thread runs through all of them: taste isn’t decoration. It’s discipline, judgment, and courage. 

Alright, tons of opinions here, but I’ve tried to distill all the writing, my opinion, and the community voices into 10 laws that govern what I believe is good taste in marketing and life.

The 10 Laws of Good Taste (which I completely made up)

1. It’s not decoration. It’s not surface polish. it’s substance embedded in every decision.

2. It’s about noticing. You build it through exposure, pattern recognition, and caring enough to pay attention.

3. It costs something. If it doesn’t hurt (in time, trade-offs, or courage), it’s not taste.

4. It sweats the last 10%. The extra mile, the invisible details, are what separate good from great.

5. It endures. Trends come and go, but true taste endures the test of time.

6. It’s courageous. It risks standing apart when consensus is the safer path.

7. It serves both utility and delight. It has to work, and it has to move you.

8. It requires restraint. Knowing when to stop, when enough is enough.

9. It is holistic. It’s not siloed. The brand, product, and experience are indivisible.

10. It compounds. It builds, decision by decision, until good taste becomes culture.

If you would do me the distinct pleasure of staying with me, I’d love to delve into each of the laws to provide some context and offer my opinions, helping to guide us through this journey.

1. Good taste is not decoration. 

The most dangerous lie in B2B marketing is that taste lives on the surface. A logo refresh here, a new color palette there, a tagline brainstormed in a Google doc, and suddenly, people think the job is done. 

But that’s not taste. That’s paint.

Taste is built within the architecture. It’s embedded in the brand's structure, not layered on top. It’s not lip gloss. Sarah Guo points to Stripe’s error messages as proof: they’re not just technically correct, they’re respectful. They are human. She also goes on to state, “real taste shows up in the features you kill because they’re not essential.” 

Let’s read it again. Real taste shows up in the feature you kill because they’re not essential. 

That small nod to focus reveals an entire philosophy revolving around care. Kristian has put it a little more bluntly: “everything is designed, either by you or for you,” which means if you don’t take ownership, entropy will. 

The LinkedIn community echoed pretty much the same opinion: Kelsey Calabro called it “refined judgment,” Taylor Wilson said it shows up in the details (the care and thought behind choices), not in flashy aesthetics. 

Taste, in other words, is substance.

And in B2B, this matters more than anywhere else. A beautiful website doesn’t fix a confusing onboarding flow or shitty product. A shiny campaign doesn’t erase a lifeless sales deck and a terrible story. Good taste shows up in the in-between: how a customer conversation feels, whether the follow-up email respects their time,and how your brand comes alive in a quarterly business review.

If good marketing only shows up at the surface, it’s already too late.

2. Good taste is noticing. 

The thought that Rick Rubin can’t play an instrument is absolutely wild to me. Yet he’s produced some of the most iconic albums of our time and some of my favorites (Blood Sugar Sex Magik FTW). His superpower isn’t his mastery over the sound board or instruments; it’s his ability to notice. He knows when something feels right, and he has the conviction to protect that feeling. 

IMHO, that’s good taste.

Ira Glass said it another way: every creative person starts with a frustrating gap. Your taste develops before your skill does. You notice what’s wrong long before you can fix it. That tension is what drives you forward.

Members of my own community echoed the same truth. Drew Giovannoli argued that good taste requires exposure to what’s been tried before so you can make intentional choices, not default ones. Evan Thomas compared it to wine: you can’t know what’s good until you’ve tasted enough bottles to recognize the difference. And god knows, I’ve tasted enough bottles before 2024. :) 

Taste isn’t innate. It’s trained by caring enough to pay attention. 

Sarah Guo frames it appropriately as an apprenticeship: watching someone make a hundred small decisions until you begin to recognize the pattern yourself. Kristian would call it standards, you develop an internal compass by noticing, over and over, what’s worth keeping and what isn’t.

In B2B marketing, this looks less like musical instinct and more like customer instinct. Do you notice where buyers’ eyes glaze over in your demo? Do you notice the slide that always gets a nod at the event? Do you notice when a campaign drives traffic but not ACTUAL REVENUE? Taste is built in those moments of noticing and pattern recognition.

Some of my favorite marketers (Adam Singer included) who win, aren’t the ones who chase every trend. They’re the ones who notice the small signals, sharpen their judgement, and trust their gut implicitly. 

3. Good taste hurts

Kristian shared a letter written in 1947, in which Bill Bernbach issued a warning to his growing agency about “worshiping ritual instead of God.” He was terrified of formulas. He feared what happens when creativity degrades into formulas, when advertising is defended by rules instead of being inspired by ideas. 

I believe what he was really describing is the cost of good taste: it requires risk. Safe, formulaic, frameworks and playbooks are easy. 

Good taste is expensive. 

Sarah makes the same point in her manifesto. If your so-called “taste” doesn’t cost you anything, it’s not taste… it’s a preference. 

Good taste hurts. 

It means killing features that could have expanded your TAM. It means perfecting details most users will never consciously notice. It means watching competitors grab headlines while you protect the integrity of your vision.

And the LinkedIn community agreed! Megan Dorcey pointed out that taste without wisdom isn’t enough. You need the experience to know what to pursue and what to walk away from. Amrit Seth framed it as zigging when everyone else zags, with enough confidence to make the rest of the room wonder if they had it wrong all along. 

Taste requires saying no when 'yes' is the easier, faster, or more popular option.

In the world of B2B, this plays out every single damn day. It’s about choosing not to ship the half-baked demo just to win a customer. It’s about pushing a due date on a product video because three seconds in a sixty-second video doesn’t feel right. It’s about making an uncomfortable decision to focus on a campaign with one clear message, rather than cramming in ten talking points to keep the committee happy. 

Taste has a price. It costs time, it costs opportunities, and sometimes it costs revenue in the short term. But it’s the only way to build work that lasts.

4. Good taste sweats the last 10%. 

I’d love to walk into a Rob Mills home. I haven’t had the chance to yet, but if you get the chance, I guarantee you’ll notice two things: the obvious beauty, and the invisible performance. These houses aren’t just designed to impress. Yes, the architecture is stunning. But what makes it remarkable is what you don’t see: the systems that keep the home running, the details that make it comfortable.

That’s good taste: not the shell of the home, but the invisible ten percent that most people skip.

My friend Tommy Short described it this way: one person leaves with an armful of “almost-rights,” while another walks out with the perfect piece. Both worked equally hard to look, but only one had the patience and judgment to keep digging.

In B2B marketing, the last 10% is usually the first thing to get cut. A sales deck is “good enough” if it has the content. But good taste refuses to stop there. It’s in the way the story flows in the deck, the clarity of the copy on the landing page, and the polish of the launch assets that make them feel inevitable instead of rushed.

At Lessonly, we had a value called “Share before ready.” It didn’t mean lowering the bar; it meant letting people in early enough to sharpen the work. Sharing before ready gave you the feedback to get to 90%. Taste is what gets you from 90 to 100.

Taste isn’t the willingness to start strong. It’s the refusal to finish weak.

5. Good taste endures.

Bad design gets thrown away. Good taste survives. 

Rob Mills builds homes designed to outlast their owners. They aren’t just beautiful on the day they’re photographed for a magazine spread they’re meant to withstand decades, even generations. He talks about craftsmanship that doesn’t get “chucked away with the bad design.” That’s good taste.

Kristian takes it even further. He calls taste objective, not subjective.

In his words: “Good taste is good judgment. Judgment is the ability to discern truth from falsehood. And truth, well…it’s beautiful.” 

He argues there is a physics to beauty: eternal, immutable, applicable across cultures and time. Hume, Kant, Plato, and a long line of thinkers agreed. Which means good taste isn’t trend-chasing or personal whim. It’s choosing what will remain beautiful when the moment has passed.

Good taste endures because it connects to something deeper than preference.

In our world of B2B, endurance is rare. Campaigns are built two weeks before they are launched, sales decks are rebuilt every six months, and brand guidelines are revised whenever a new leader joins the team. But good taste should resist that churn. It’s the positioning that’s still true years later. It’s the opposite of what Adam Singer calls “enshittification of marketing.” 

Good taste is the opposite of enshittification. 

Taste endures because it’s not decoration. It’s judgment. And as Kristian reminds me often, the greatest skill a business leader can possess is good taste. Failing that, it’s the ability to hire people who have it.

6. Good taste is courageous. 

Adam Singer has a phrase I’ve never been able to shake: the “soulless blandscape.” He’s talking about what happens when brands get flattened by committees, consultants, and consensus. 

Good taste is not consensus. Bad taste is what happens when fear wins.

Logos stripped of character. Campaigns engineered to offend no one and inspire no one. Work that feels safe, respectable, and utterly forgettable.

And boring. 

Mr. Bernbach saw this danger long before the era of Cracker Barrell logo flattening. The letter I mentioned before? Yah, there’s more about good taste. He wasn’t just warning about formulas. He was warning about fear. Fear of being wrong. Fear of looking foolish. Fear of doing something new. His letter is a reminder that marketing (like all creative work) dies when fear takes the wheel.

Courage in taste is different. It separates the good from the bad. And as Adam rightfully called out: It’s Coke releasing I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke, audaciously sentimental in an era of cynicism. It’s Nike coining Just Do It from a raw cultural current about pushing limits. It’s Volkswagen joking about the Beetle being small when Detroit was screaming horsepower.

B2B marketers must have the courage to say the thing no one else will say. It means leading with narrative, not features. It means being willing to publish a brand manifesto instead of another whitepaper no one reads. 

Good taste is never the easy choice. It’s the willingness to stand apart when consensus is the path of least resistance.

7. Good taste is subtraction. 

Rick Rubin built a career on subtraction. I’ve always admired his ability to create great music without adding more instruments to a track. Great music was made by stripping everything away until the essence of the song was undeniable. Rubin says taste is about trusting your own ear enough to stop before the mix gets crowded.

And if you’ve ever played music or recorded music, you know how difficult it is to subtract instead of add. 

The LinkedIn community echoed this sentiment. Robert Kaminski put it bluntly: good taste requires ruthless removal. 

Good taste is about restraint. In the B2B world you can imagine the varying degrees of restraint that are ignored. It’s the campaign that uses a ton of unforgettable lines instead of getting straight to the point. It’s the website that gives you clarity in one or two clicks instead of six. 

Bad taste is clutter. Good taste is clarity. The courage to delete is often the mark of someone who cares most.

8. Good taste is intentional. 

I’ve read and heard Kristian Andersen say this multiple times: “Everything’s designed. Either by you…or for you.” 

If you don’t make the choice, the culture, the committee, or the default setting will. And when that happens, it usually isn’t optimal. 

It’s usually bad taste. 

Good taste reveals itself in the details. Sarah points to Notion’s six-dot drag handle: 

Notion's drag handle appears only on hover. Six dots arranged in two columns. Not three lines, not always visible. Because permanence is clutter and six dots whisper "grab me" while three lines shout "I'm a menu."

My community made the same point: Miranda Amey said taste is curation with intention: whether it’s in how you speak, design, or even decorate your home. Taylor Wilson argued that good taste reveals itself in care, thought, and effort behind every choice.

The opposite of intention is drift. That’s how most B2B marketers lose their edge. They stop deciding, and just start accepting. Every terrible stock photo, ugly ad, boring booth, every cliche, every corporate phrase that sneaks into copy… is a small act of bad taste.  

Taste isn’t luck. It’s the accumulation of thousands of deliberate choices.

9. Good taste is holistic.

Typing the word taste so many times is making me hungry but we should still continue. 

Bad taste is siloed. Good taste is fully integrated. 

And it wouldn’t be a taste rule without Kristian Andersen: 

“The brand is the product. The product is the experience. The experience is the brand—an indivisible combination of purpose, substance, and function.” 

In his world, you don’t design a logo and call it a brand. You design the pricing model, the go-to-market plan, the customer experience, and the hiring process. All of it is the brand.

Rob Mills adopts a similar approach in architecture. For him, a home isn’t just the façade or the floorplan. It’s the systems, the sustainability, the furniture, the feeling you get after hours around the table. Craft without holism is decoration. Holism is what makes a house into a home.

My community echoed it, too. Pablo Pacheco framed taste as the ability to see through the customer’s eyes, not just one touchpoint, but the whole perception of your product or service. Maureen West said taste is a mix of worldview, experience, and social awarenes, it’s the context that ties it all together.

In the world of B2B, holism is everything. A website that says one thing, a sales deck that says another, and a product that delivers something else isn’t bad execution; it’s bad taste. The companies that stand out are the ones where every touchpoint feels like it came from the same intelligence. Same story, same restraint, same point of view.

Good taste is holistic because people don’t experience your company in parts. They experience the whole.

10. Good taste compounds. 

Taste doesn’t show up all at once. It builds, decision by decision.

Sarah Guo calls this the compound advantage: ten thousand small choices that add up until the product, the brand, the company just feels inevitable. Stripe’s error messages, Figma’s multiplayer cursors, Linear’s pixel-perfect waitlist page — none of them are accidents. They’re the result of teams making the right call over and over again.

Rick Rubin would call it an apprenticeship. You don’t learn taste from a manual. You learn it by sitting next to someone who cares enough to fight for every detail — and watching them do it a hundred times until you start to care too. Taste spreads through osmosis, not instruction.

My community captured this as well. Valeriia Frolova argued that taste evolves from the influences you allow in: the books, people, and feedback that sharpen your perspective.

In B2B marketing, the compounding effect is obvious. One sloppy asset teaches the team that polish doesn’t matter. One rushed campaign teaches them that deadlines matter more than performance.

But the inverse is just as true: one crisp deck raises the bar for the next one. One well-written manifesto becomes the foundation for years of positioning. Taste compounds when people see, feel, and refuse to settle for less.

The real magic is that compound taste becomes self-reinforcing. The more you choose it, the easier it is to spot. The easier it is to spot, the harder it is to unsee. And once you’ve seen it, you can’t go back.

So, where does all this leave me?

Am I enlightened? Hardly. Do I understand taste better than last week? Maybe.

Here’s what I do know: taste is not a gift you’re born with. It’s not decoration. It’s not a flex. Taste is built. It’s noticed. It’s sharpened through care, courage, and repetition until it becomes the default setting of how you work.

And in B2B marketing (where sameness spreads like mold), taste is the only real moat. Not because it makes your campaigns prettier, but because it makes your company harder to forget.

Maybe that’s the final lesson: good taste is just giving a damn, over and over again, until everyone around you can’t help but give a damn too.

That’s what I’m chasing.