Erlen Masson
BlackDoctor
To launch BlackDoctor's platform rebrand, we hosted an immersive VIP event for brand partners. The result? An 860% audience surge, two major partnerships signed, and national press from Forbes, AfroTech and more.
BlackDoctor is the largest digital health platform serving Black communities in the US. It reaches 26 million people a month, and it earned that over two decades.
The brand hadn't kept up. The identity was still the one it launched with, the platform was still running on legacy technology, and the whole thing sat a step behind the audience it had spent twenty years building. The authority was real. It just wasn't sounding like it.
I led the rebrand and platform transformation end to end, from strategy through to go-to-market, with my team across brand, design and build.
Before any visual work, one question. What does this brand have to represent for the people it serves?
For many Black communities, healthcare is defined by a trust gap. No logo closes that, but every touchpoint either narrows the distance or widens it. So we rebuilt the editorial pillars, the writing principles, the tone of voice, the art direction and the user experience around a single mission. Help every Black family thrive in health.
The identity came out of that rather than the other way round. Sophisticated, warm, direct. Not qualities we invented for them, qualities the brand already had and wasn't saying clearly.
Designing an editorial platform is its own problem. Content changes daily, categories multiply, everything interlinks, and the journey turns chaotic fast. The design system is what made it navigable, and it now carries the content, the campaigns, the ad products and the AI tools.
Then we changed the launch sequence. Rather than announce publicly and chase commercial partners afterwards, we ran a private preview in New York and put partners inside the new brand world first. Full-bleed wall projections, down to branded coasters and ice cubes.
We'd never produced an event before. We said yes anyway, for a simple reason. Nobody knew the new brand more intimately than the team that built it.
Reordering the launch paid commercially. Two partnerships signed shortly after, with partners who had stood inside the new world before the public saw it.
The rebrand didn't just pull a bigger audience either. It pulled the right one. Readership rose 860% and sessions ran 47% longer. That second number is the one I'd point at. Anyone can win the click. Holding someone once they arrive is the brand doing its job.
Let's talk
Every project starts with a conversation. Tell me what you're building and I'll take it from there.