Project industry: manufacturing
Audience: gen pop

Building a brand playbook for the recycled materials industry

Why this project’s in my portfolio: to demonstrate my ability to tie different brand elements into a coherent brand strategy

Project context:

In the first part of this campaign, maslansky+partners rebranded the verbal identity of ISRI, the U.S’s recycling trade association. This time around, we set out to completely revamp the association’s brand identity to unveil at the upcoming annual convention for member companies.

Objectives:

Give the “Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI)” a new name and tagline…
Create and define a harmonious brand identity…

to support the goal of shifting audience perceptions about the recycling industry

Where we started:

Where we ended up:

A bold brand identity that’s anything but the status quo. Moving away from the blues, greens, and chasing arrows that have been the go-to visual elements for recycling, the rebrand places The Recycled Materials Association (ReMA) in the realm of companies and industries that are innovative and future-oriented.

The identity shift: from focusing on the inputs and processes involved in recycling to products and real-world audience impact

The verbal identity positions recycled materials as essential and integral to our day-to-day lives. Informative language is easily digestible, and does not lean on manufacturing jargon. Critically, the language and visual identity focuses less on the inputs and processes in recycling, and more on outputs that can directly benefit the reader.

The iconography highlights everyday items like bridges, cars, and electronic devices.

The recurring motif of dots is representative of various parts coming together to form one unit, symbolic of both ReMA as an organization made up of member companies and the composition of recycled materials.

Approach:
Discovery: conducted a comprehensive landscape audit of recycling companies’ visual and verbal identities to identify opportunities for differentiation; ideated on the most viable options to concept for a new name, tagline, and visual identity; hosted stakeholder workshops to share audit findings and concepts, and to align on direction for the rebrand

Methodologies: leveraged insights from previous mixed-method workstreams that redefined the recycling industry’s verbal identity from a focus on inputs (trash, waste) to outputs (innovative technology, essential infrastructure); applied these prior learnings to shape visual and messaging direction for the rebrand; used workshop feedback to iteratively refine strategy for the new identity before finalization

Deliverables:

A new name: The Recycled Materials Association (ReMA)
A new tagline: Sustainable. Resilient. Essential.
A playbook for member companies that contains guidelines on the do’s and don’ts of talking about recycled materials—in the new visual identity
Visual brand guidelines linking brighter, more modern motifs to the industry’s role in innovation and building infrastructure
Experiential assets and concepts for unveiling the new brand at the convention

Key research questions:

How can we reflect the shift in our verbal identity—from focusing on the industry’s inputs to its outputs—in a brand new visual identity?
What are the colors, themes, and motifs that best bring the verbal identity to life?
What should the new name of “The Institute for Scrap and Recycling Industries” (ISRI) be?

project conducted at maslansky+partners | You can read more about this project here

Strategy Portfolio