Make it
A New Brand for a New Audience
OBJECTIVE
Not Just Business as Usual
Recognized world leader in business news, CNBC provides coverage to 410 million homes worldwide. Yet the brand continues to expand and explore new areas of content on its mission to become the source for “All Things Money.”
Make It first launched in 2016 as a subsection of CNBC.com and quickly became the largest section of the site. It relaunched as a standalone website with a distinct look and feel in early 2019. But the origins of this brand begin with a broader demographic study.
The research revealed untapped audience segments with different needs and focus than the typical CNBC viewer. They are entrepreneurs and dreamers who seek advice, instruction, and inspiration.
This led to the creation of new shows for CNBC Primetime, and a millennial-focused website called CNBC Make It, with content focused on success, money, work, and life.
DESIGN APPROACH
Creating a Fresh New Look
When Make It began as a section of CNBC.com it was tied closely to the primetime television campaign of the moment. However, it lacked a cohesive look and feel across platforms, the content wasn't easily discoverable, and the brand didn't have a clear voice and tone.
This new site had to separate itself from classic CNBC visually by using bold colors, unique patterns, vibrant photography, flexible typography, and fun iconography. It needed to feel substantive, approachable, vibrant, optimistic, and helpful.
This is achieved with a modern and lively aesthetic, using delicate patterns juxtaposed with strong graphic shapes, a cool color palette anchored by dark grey with a bright orange accent, and full-color photography. As part of a collaboration with the fantastic UX/UI designers and thinkers at Code & Theory, we created an exciting sub-brand for CNBC that has become a source of information and inspiration for millions of entrepreneurs.
The new sans serif "Averta" is used as the lead, friendly and clean, complemented by a chunky serif face, Rozha One, which evokes the typefaces used in currency.
RESULTS
Make it 2.0
Reaching and serving younger, new-to-CNBC, tech-savvy customers meant leveraging all aspects of digital and traditional media; including social platforms, broadcast television, original video series print, as well as events, to weave multiple content types together, creating a richer story-telling experience across platforms, and building brand loyalty.
This new site is seeing explosive traffic from social and search, the team is growing fast and Make it is becoming one of the most successful properties for the organization.
The second of three sites to be built on the backbone of the CNBC.com design system, Make it is visually compelling and solves many issues that limited the original incarnation. The voice and tone are now clearly reflected in the design and the brand seamlessly carries across into multiple platforms and creative executions.
