Bringing Wirecutter and The New York Times’ brand values to life through a rebranded identity system that builds equity in the brand to help establish Wirecutter as the go-to, differentiated source for trustworthy, high-quality product reviews and buying advice.
Challenge
The existing Wirecutter lacked uniqueness and was not cohesive enough to live as a part of The New York Times’ family brand. With two very distinctive brands without much equity built in Wirecutter, it was time to re-define who it was and create awareness.
Goals
The primary goals of the rebrand were to leverage elements from the identity system of The New York Times to create a scalable and extensible visual system; build equity in Wirecutter as a standalone product of NYT and build brand awareness through marketing, product and editorial initiatives.
Process
Once we had initial positioning and strategy handed off by the external design agency, Gretel our process included pressure testing all the elements of the system across all the various channels. With each of these experiments, refinements were made and documented in our brand guidelines and then rolled out across all marketing, product and social channels.
