Alsco

Background
Alsco is a global textile rental service, which has operated in the Australasian market since 1963. Today, the business employs 12,000 people and has expanded the product range to include garments, mats, washroom services, first aid consumables and management training services. Through our workshop, we identified that the brand a number of internal issues that emerged from its growth history – the business was working in silos, had a range of brand architecture issues and had a product rather than customer focus.

Strategy
Traffic assisted Alsco shift from a product-oriented business model to a customer-oriented business model in terms of both service delivery and communication. This involved a brand refresh, a range of technological innovations and a new way of communicating across digital and print platforms. Essentially, Alsco would now tailor their conversation to the needs of the customer, rather than talking about the products.

Solution
Based on the brand essence ‘The Knowledge to Care’, a new brand identity was developed. Whilst we had to maintain the international logo, the surrounding visual language was refreshed to reflect ‘the language of care’, namely care instructions on a clothes label. The use of well-known icons enabled us to convey the diversity of product and service range, whilst allowing the messaging to be specifically directed at the customer’s needs. The key elements of the brand refresh that we created are now being rolled out across a number of other countries around the world.