McQuillan companies approached the branding team at Kaizen Brand Evolution to re-position and revitalise their brand identity. The family-owned business is well established across Northern Ireland and is specialists in civil engineering, quarrying, waste management and outdoor cleaning services to name a few. McQuillan Companies have a large presence on the road, their vehicles being instantly recognisable, a lot of which is down to their unique colour palette, something that the branding team had to keep in mind throughout the brand audit. Auditing a brand is our way of truthfully expressing the business offering today, whilst retaining loyal clients brand understanding and improving brand touchpoints (such as vehicle livery) we aim to create a brand purpose that keeps the business relevant and exciting for new and potential future clients.

McQuillan Companies – in their own words:

McQuillan Companies are a Northern Ireland based family run business which incorporates a diverse range of activities including civil engineering, demolition, quarrying, hazardous and non-hazardous waste management, outdoor cleaning services and analytical chemistry. A fourth generation business operating for over 100 years through the parent company John McQuillan Contracts, the McQuillan Companies name is synonymous with quality and excellence throughout our various divisions.

Getting started we focussed our research and investigation to forward-thinking, modern brands in the engineering, construction and land service industry – looking to London, New York and further afield. With brand learning’s from across the globe we built a solid understanding of what branding was working and not working in this industrial landscape. Following initial research and mood boarding, we filtered the findings down into 3 solid directions and began brand planning.

We initially developed the narrative before jumping into the design for McQuillan Companies. The narrative on this occasion was ‘Here for tomorrow’ – a modern, forward-thinking strapline for a modern, forward thinking business who are, in effect working on making tomorrow a better, safer place to live. We purposely avoided building or construction clichés so that the narrative was widespread across the entire company intern breeding a positive brand culture – essentially this narrative has legs to be flexible across different business facets.

We now needed a logo mark that reflected what we were talking about in the narrative. The McQuillan monogram stems from the idea of engineering and overall solid work that the company undertake. The new logo is a strong, trustworthy mark that brings together the initials of the family name and visualises the industry – simply. Our goal for any brand undertaking is to simplify, make brands that people get, without the use of selfish design techniques or trends. The logo proves successful when used across brand materials and especially in the brand livery and uniforms. Alongside the new mark, we introduced a structured contemporary typeface that suits the tone of voice and industry of McQuillan Companies. The flexibility of the new identity becomes apparent across the different business sectors where the company sector is simply introduced to the stacked lettering in each instance. Throughout the new branding, we have directed the new photography style, using modern dramatic images of the work in progress as well as team members in situ.

The crescendo of the brand audit was the re-design and use of the new branding across the vehicles. The vehicles that define a McQuillan job have been reinvented for future use and business growth, utilising the flexibility of the new logo mark and brand narrative they suitably stand out on the roads and truthfully represent the businesses heritage and future.

It was a pleasure working on the brand audit for McQuillan Companies and we look forward to rolling out the brand collateral in the not too distant future.