Condé
Predicting the shift from distributed content to unified membership experiences.
Strategic Challenge
In 2022, Condé Nast faced a critical fragmentation problem: iconic brands like Vogue, GQ, and The New Yorker operated as dozens of separate digital properties, making discovery nearly impossible for consumers. While content aggregators like Apple News commoditized media, and social platforms captured attention, Condé Nast's editorial authority was scattered across an incomprehensible maze of websites and apps.
The industry consensus was to chase platform algorithms and optimize for social distribution. Publishers were becoming content farms, sacrificing editorial integrity for viral reach.
Strategic Vision
We developed a contrarian strategy: leverage Condé Nast's unique editorial authority by creating a unified membership platform that organized the entire portfolio around individual "Taste Profiles." Instead of chasing algorithms, we would create our own.
The Condé+ strategy positioned the company as the "ultimate destination for authority" across culture, fashion, and lifestyle—competing not with other publishers, but with premium membership experiences like American Express and Soho House.
The Work
- Created unified platform strategy that consolidated 20+ brand websites into a single membership experience
- Developed "Taste Profile" technology that personalized content curation beyond simple clicks
- Built revenue model projecting 2.7M subscribers at $199/year ($573M potential revenue)
- Designed tiered launch strategy from content aggregation to full lifestyle services
- Established membership positioning around editorial expertise rather than content volume
Leadership Transition
New leadership arrived with traditional digital media thinking, viewing the strategy as "too ambitious" and "not core to publishing." Despite research validating demand and pricing, the decision was made to focus on individual brand optimization and social platform distribution instead.
Market Validation
The strategy's prescience became evident as the market evolved:
- Subscription fatigue hit publishers relying on individual brand subscriptions
- Apple News+ struggled without editorial curation and brand authority
- Premium membership models thrived (Masterclass, Patreon, Substack)
- AI aggregation emerged as the dominant content discovery method
- Editorial authority became scarce as AI-generated content proliferated
Meanwhile, Condé Nast's fragmented approach led to declining engagement across individual properties and continued dependence on volatile social platform algorithms.
Strategic Insight Proven
The future belonged to platforms that combined authoritative curation with personalized experience. Companies like Substack, Masterclass, and even Spotify proved that audiences would pay premium prices for expertly curated, personalized content experiences rather than algorithmic feeds.
The lesson: In an age of infinite content, editorial authority and personalized curation become the most valuable scarce resources. The future belongs to unified experiences, not fragmented brands.
Foundational to all of the work was clarifying the roles and relationships between brands, a classic strategy for brand architecture. Built in partnership with each of the Global Editors for each of the 26 titles, along with their individual global leadership teams, this work was pivotal in creating each of their own identities but also the respect and understanding of the other titles’ authorities. Establishing each brand’s cultural authority allowed for easy linkages between brands, which led us directly to building the Premium Media Network. Evolving this into Condé+ was just a matter of packaging.
The organizing idea for our future design system: The Pen of the Editor. For more than 100 years, our founder and our editors have left their mark on the world of culture. Starting from the penmanship of Condé himself, the notes, marks and direction taken from the pen are the symbols of our cultural evolution. Condé is a personal signature. A signature of the founder. A handwritten note from an editor. A proxy for everyone involved. An unfinished chain of authorship bringing wonder, inviting people to complete their own stories.
The vision film for Condé+, showing the ways that the full portfolio could come together in a new consumer-facing brand. The importance of a masterbrand that could rise to the level of the portfolio brands was one thing, but to bring it all together in a modern, digital-first way was another challenge altogether.
A snapshot of the Condé+ app experience, organizing the world of culture around the tastes of each consumer.
