MAN

A disconnected dilemma

The MAN team used several separate tools for different aspects of brand management. This meant that, while becoming a more digitalized and cross-functional company, collaborating on creative projects was extremely time-consuming and complicated to manage. Having numerous platforms resulted in constant maintenance work, confusing access permission management, long onboarding periods, and siloed workflows — learning and working in different tools slowed teams down and caused proverbial headaches.

Considering that the MAN team is spread across more than 100 countries, the teams needed a centralized online solution to create a consistent global brand that can be adapted locally.

A streamlined solution

The Frontify platform helped MAN consolidate and centralize its brand management activities. MAN’s Frontify journey started in 2016 when they replaced their PDF brand guidelines with online digital guidelines. Then, they expanded to launch a fully-fledged online Brand Portal, bringing everything related to the MAN brand into Frontify. Frontify’s Brand Guidelines helped MAN improve brand consistency and communicate its unique identity to all departments and markets. And its DAM enables them to organize and manage all their brand assets, from basic elements like logos and colors, to fully fledged assets like trade show banners, campaign artwork, or digital components. MAN’s CRAFT design system, which was added and expanded in the last couple of years, has further revolutionized the creative processes, enhancing efficiency and collaboration across teams.

Additionally, everything is organized into libraries so it’s easy for users (both internal and external) to find the files they need. At the heart of this structure lies the icon library, which has evolved into one of the most vital and frequently utilized resources for the teams, providing quick access to essential design elements that drive creativity and consistency across all projects.

A rewarding result

Frontify has given MAN a centralized space for all brand material, content, design and code, and publication creation. Here’s a closer look at the MAN Brand Portal:

• Regularly used by over 12,000 users
• Home to more than 10,000 assets, from brand elements to finished campaign files
• Over 290,000 guideline pages have been viewed over a six-month period (February to July 2024)
• Used by MAN employees worldwide, sales and service partners, and external partners and service providers.
• The first contact point to a consistent digital user experience, including design and code for digital components
• Streamlining collaboration and communication to enable MAN to work much more efficiently as an organization.

In 2024, the team implemented a new structure that modernized and clarified the design by creating new libraries and areas to manage specific asset types. They also repositioned topics based on the evolving understanding of what users needed from the portal. After running extensive user testing to understand how people navigated the platform, the MAN brand teams used the insights to improve the portal’s navigation.

Next, they plan to strengthen their media library even more, looking to improve asset tagging, metadata, and organization to continuously improve the search experience for all users.