Manpower: A Global Campaign Built With People

Helping a global talent leader find its voice by turning real career stories into a worldwide campaign.

Manpower saw what most of its category missed. As AI reshapes work, the brands that win will be the ones that still feel human. In a category built on human ambition, the brand had drifted corporate. It needed a campaign that felt less like a company talking and more like real people being heard.

Hyperquake’s answer was to stop building the campaign for Manpower’s audience and start building it with them. Working in person across four markets at once, we created the brand’s first global UGC-driven co-creation campaign: an idea rooted in real career stories that invites people to thank the mentors, colleagues, and unexpected influences who shaped their working lives. “Dear ____,” resonates in every region while staying true to each. It starts by giving people a reason to share their stories, then turns that moment into an invitation to build what’s next together, doing what Manpower does best: making genuinely human moments between people and work.

A brand that travels is not the same as a brand that belongs. Rather than build in one market and deploy everywhere else, Hyperquake showed up in all four. We ran workshops in the US, the UK, Italy, and France in parallel, sitting down with local teams, associates, and candidates to understand each market’s language, culture, and relationship with work.

The campaign came out of The Co-Creation Method®, a four-to-six-week process that moves from mindset to market. We build a co-creation culture inside the organization, sharpen the insight in a brief, then bring the brand together in a hands-on workshop where content is created and captured live.

Manpower chose the concept “Dear ____,” inviting people to write to the mentor, colleague, or stranger who changed their working life. It is simple, personal, and endlessly local. The same idea carries a different accent in every market, from “Dear Brian, thank you for teaching me how to show up for others” to “Ciao Claire, tu m’as montré l’importance de croire en moi-même.” Transcreation, not translation, keeps the idea true to each culture while keeping the platform one.

To bring the idea to life, Manpower began collecting the raw material of the campaign itself: real letters from people. In Italy, Manpower gathered stories in Piazza Muccioli in Sanremo under the banner “Dai voce al tuo futuro,” or “Give voice to your future.” Over six days, students, young professionals, and passersby stopped to share the people and moments behind their careers, more than 1,000 stories in all. France followed. What emerged was proof of the idea’s power: a co-created concept that people want to be part of, ready to activate across markets.

Manpower continues to gather letters across all four regions as the campaign rolls out worldwide. Below, a look at how the idea comes to life.

“You’ve created a meaningful extension of our huManpower platform that’s worth sharing and being a part of. We’re ready to activate this.”

Ruth Harper

SVP, Global Chief Marketing & Sustainability Officer ManpowerGroup