I’ve always been fascinated by how the great painters of the Italian Renaissance managed to make their work feel almost alive. When I first learned about Leonardo da Vinci’s technique called sfumato—the soft, smoky blending that defines the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper—something clicked for me.
Sfumato, which literally means “softened by smoke,” creates transitions so smooth they seem to dissolve into air. Leonardo used it to merge color, light, and shadow in ways that feel effortless. What strikes me most is that this technique isn’t about blurring detail—it’s about creating atmosphere. The edges remain, but they breathe. The viewer fills in the space with imagination and emotion.
Leonardo built sfumato on three powerful principles that I think apply far beyond art:
- Gradual transitions: nothing exists in isolation; everything blends into something else.
- Atmosphere: the surrounding tone shapes the meaning.
- Ambiguity with clarity: the image is clear enough to recognize but open enough to interpret.
It’s this last one that speaks directly to marketing.
When Marketing Became All About Sharp Lines
For most of my career, I—like many marketers—was taught that differentiation depends on clarity and distinction. Draw sharp edges. Define your boundaries. Make the claim so specific that there’s no mistaking you for anyone else.
And for a time, that approach worked. But over the years, I’ve watched how those sharp lines start to fade with many distinguished brands and products. The reality is that competitors catch up. Categories blur. Suddenly, what once felt bold and distinct began to feel… indistinguishable.
Everyone was claiming innovation, purpose, trust, speed, or intelligence. This is truer in B2B marketing than ever before. With AI, even the copy seems like its copied from someone else. AI slop makes it even harder to create an enduring position.
That’s when I started wondering: maybe the problem isn’t that our lines disappeared—maybe they were drawn too hard in the first place.
What Happens When We Apply Sfumato to Branding
The more I studied sfumato, the more I realized it might hold a lesson for how brands can remain both distinct and human. So, I started experimenting with it as a mental model for positioning.
I now think of brand messaging in two layers:
- The hard claim is your anchor—the clear, measurable benefit that gives you credibility and focus.
- The soft field is the emotional atmosphere around that claim—the empathy, belonging, joy, or sense of accomplishment that connects the message to human experience.
- And then there’s strategic ambiguity—enough openness for customers to interpret, adapt, and make the brand story their own. It’s the air between the edges that makes a message breathe.
When we layer empathy around differentiation, something subtle happens. The brand stops shouting and starts resonating. People don’t just understand what you stand for—they feel invited to belong to it.
A Simple Sfumato Exercise
Here’s a little experiment for you to try when positioning your next product or service.
Write down one hard benefit your product delivers—something concrete and provable. Then, next to it, jot down two stories from real customers that show how that benefit makes them feel. Finally, merge them into a single paragraph that holds both—the clarity of fact and the warmth of feeling.
That’s sfumato thinking applied to branding. It’s not about softening your strategy—it’s about softening its edges just enough for people to step inside it.
Because just like da Vinci’s paintings, the brands that endure aren’t the ones that simply draw the sharpest lines. They’re the ones that let meaning emerge from the air between them.
