Millennium Promise

Rebranded by WANT Branding, June 2007

Founded by renowned economist Jeff Sachs and philanthropist Ray Chambers, Millennium Promise is a charitable organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty in Africa by 2025. Among Millennium Promise’s objectives is to assist in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight goals signed by 192 United Nations member states, which pledges to eliminate many of the associated elements of poverty.

 The NGO's professional staff were working with a clean, direct logo that however lacked presence, and a true but wordy tagline “ensure ours is the last generation to know poverty," and felt both could be made more compelling. Strategist Jonathan Bell's branding consultancy, WANT Branding, accepted this pro bono challenge.

In the end, the rebranding idea would center on the new tagline. It had to be short, catchy, simple — to express the driving purpose, and engage participation  —and to work with staff, with donors/investors, and with the people in African villages working to pull themselves out of extreme poverty.  A tall order. The solution, “extreme poverty ends here,” does all this nicely.

The new logo expresses “here” with a red frame, the place where poverty ends. The frame is used both as the graphic device incorporated in a straightforward wordmark (where it's empty), and as a containing shape in the broader visual system.

WANT then redesigned all office applications, such as business card, envelopes, letterhead and stationary, a new website, a new investor’s annual report and a style guide detailing how to maintain the brand's seamlessness in future communications.
 

Credits:
For Millennium Promise:
Martin Edlund, communications & marketing director
Strategy, tagline and design:  WANT Branding (NY)
 Project director Jonathan Bell, creative director Sandra Hill
 

Both a frame, and a logo element