McAlpine on the move with Fishburn Hedges

Fishburn Hedges has built a new corporate image for Alfred McAlpine, unveiled on Monday, that marks the company’s shift away from the construction sector to concentrate on business services.

The identity, which includes a shortening of the name to McAlpine, will be applied to print, uniforms, signage and vehicle livery over the next six months.

Once one of the biggest names in house building, the company sold McAlpine Homes for £461m to rival company George Wimpey in October 2001. Its operations are now based around three competencies: business services, including facilities management; capital projects such as civil engineering; and infrastructure services involving all major utilities. ‘We’re more of a service business now than a builder,’ says McAlpine group communications director Bill Loch. ‘The corporate rebrand helps us to communicate that change.’

According to Loch, much of the project, which has taken two years, involved researching and auditing perceptions of the company and the various brands it used across the business.

Fishburn Hedges project manager Sally Robson says the identity is ‘reasonably contemporary, but not gimmicky’. The purple colour was chosen as a move away from the ‘corporate blue’ palette of most of McAlpine’s competitors, she adds.

Ensuring that the logo ‘won’t date’ too soon and can stretch over a number of business areas were also important considerations, Robson says.

Fishburn Hedges won the brief after a five-way pitch and Carl Ison was the creative director on the project.