Manpower Inc.

New:  Repositioning, redesign, and a new logo

Launched:  February 21, 2006

Story in brief:
Since 1948, Manpower has meant "temps," having built a worldwide business of 4,400 offices and revenues of some $16 billion providing (mostly) temporary staffing services.  But today, "temps" are just one form of outsourcing, as worker/employer relationships continue to evolve. Since 1999,  under new CEO Jeff Joerres, Manpower has scrambled to expand its offerings and to keep pace, if not to lead, in adapting to rapid changes in "the world of work."  Temps, yes; but now add contract and permanent recruitment, assessment, training, outplacement and yes, outsourcing.

Joerres was frustrated, however, that the Manpower image would not change as rapidly as its reality. On a director's advice, he made the trip (from Milwaukee) to London to call on Brian Boylan, Chairman of Wolff Olins, to talk about the brand.

Wolff Olins developed the positioning goal "Thought leader in the new world of work," designed a logo and more importantly, a complete new look and feel for all Manpower media -- print, Web, and all those 4,400 offices. As many as 200 different unit and office identities would be replaced with the new brandmark.   (Three important newer subsidiaries, however -- Jefferson Wells, Elan and Right Management -- were redesigned as a sub-brand family with a common symbol, endorsed only verbally by Manpower. Wolff Olins did not advise or do this work.)

The new logo is a softer, lighter wordmark, lower-cased to be more "approachable," dominated by an abstract symbol of five rounded bars...  their meaning, "multiple choices, multiple colors." The bars are not meant to  relate to Manpower's five principal units, the designer tells me. And although they spell "mp," they are not meant to be seen as such; Manpower does not particularly want to be known as MP.

Credits:
C.E.O. - Jeffrey A. Joerres
Identity design - Wolff Olins, London (Luke Gifford, designer)
 

First Impressions:
This program is more important as a comprehensive corporate redesign, a change of look and personality, than as a new logo. As such I think it will be sweepingly effective, and I regret that identityworks.com is not set up to better illustrate a visual system like this at work.

That said, I must address the logo too. Its design strategy puzzles me. The Manpower name is (although regrettably chauvinistic) a wonderful identity asset, but it's overwhelmed here by the symbol. And to what end? Does the symbol convey a compelling idea?  Not really. You might see initials, which (undermining the name) is actually counterproductive. Personally I see a wooly animal (bison?); my ancestral hunter genes, perhaps. 

The brand architecture design puzzles me too. Granted, marketplace equities of Jefferson Wells (audit, accounting, tax professionals), Elan (IT specialists) and Right (consulting and 'career transition') must be respected, yet they are exactly what Manpower could use to expand its own reputation. Instead these three appear to be moving, together, to a different star.

Other Comments:
Tony Nguyen notes some predecessors at the rounded bar, Sony's Mylo and Intel's Viiv.

Juan Rivera was reminded of the MIT Press colophon designed by Muriel Cooper, a brilliant illustration of how hard we'll work to see letterforms no matter how tortured or abstracted they may be.