When businesses
come together,
what happens to
the brands?
Brand strategy for mergers & acquisitions
01 / The strategic choices
Brandfused helps organisations make the brand decisions created by mergers and acquisitions.
02 / The deal is done. The brand isn't.
M&A creates decisions that financial, legal and operational due diligence don't necessarily answer.
You may have acquired a company.
But you've also acquired a name, reputation, customer relationships, culture, positioning, intellectual property and years of accumulated brand equity.
Before changing any of it, it pays to understand what you've bought.
Brandfused helps you do that — and then determine what comes next.
03 / Options
Two businesses.
Five possibilities.
When businesses come together, their brands don't necessarily have to.
There is no universally right answer.
The question is which is right for your business.
01
Retain them
Keep both brands operating independently.
02
Endorse them
Retain the acquired brand while connecting it to the parent.
03
Absorb them
Migrate one business completely into the other brand.
04
Combine them
Bring elements of both together.
05
Replace them
Create something new that represents the combined organisation.
03 / Strategy before expression
Don't start
with
the logo.
Changing the identity might eventually be part of the answer.
It shouldn't be the starting point.
First we understand the businesses, audiences, cultures, reputations and existing brand equity.
Then we determine:
What stays.
What changes.
What disappears.
What needs to be created.
04 / work
Two businesses.
One new direction.
When international serviced-apartment business Q Apartments acquired Skyline, the challenge wasn't simply changing a logo.
It was understanding what each organisation brought to the combined business and what should be carried forward.
Through stakeholder engagement and brand strategy, we established shared values and a new direction before developing the brand expression and communications around it.
