Branding is an important part of M&A deals. You shouldn’t say something about it during a negotiation or leave it unchecked in a lengthy post-sales checklist.
Internal branding is all about creating a persona or identity for a department that makes people feel proud to be in it, and that will result in more engaged workers, higher performance, and higher productivity.
Preserve Brands As-Is.
Mergers and acquisitions bring new customers, funding and success to businesses – but they also bring a lot of special risks. The biggest challenge is aligning brands from various functional groups of an organization for the purpose of a merger.
This can be achieved through various methods offered by organisations. Some prefer to retain the name and present a whole new logo or icon that separates the organization from others, which could work best if brand equity is heavily woven into existing names or in cases where localization plays a key role.
The second possibility is to launch a new parent brand, unifying the two brands under one roof with a new value proposition and message. This strategy can also work especially well when new categories undergo extreme change or when combined companies have a significant market share; straightforward communication must remain at the heart of this effort, especially with external stakeholders.
Upgrade the Brand.
Mergers and acquisitions can also lead to dramatic changes in brand value and equity, and therefore, a good brand strategy is crucial to making sure that the customer and employee vision of the transaction is shared by everyone.
It’s all about maintaining each brand’s underlying equity. This can be a good move for companies who want to keep their brands in existence as a guarantee of continuity for loyal customers but want to leverage their power as a team via the brands they have.
Purchases that present perceptual barriers should consider doing this; its objective should be to infuse their brand with visual identity and messaging changes that make the purchased business feel valued and central within the newly acquired organization. In-house team members of the company, both acquired and still existing ones, should be a part of this process as an asset of feedback and also to whom process output is directed.
Hybrid the Brands
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are your company’s most exciting investments that promise to provide you with capital, new opportunities, new customers and profitability. But success in M&A means more than getting regulatory stamp of approval or consolidating books, it also means developing a thorough marketing program including internal and external outreach.
One popular M&A branding approach is to unite the brands and rebrand them under one identity to define the new entity going forward. This choice communicates to customers, investors and employees – from brand names displayed when they buy something to ticker symbols that show up when you make an investment or even the name of your employee on their business cards.
This strategy should include a detailed brand analysis, governance mechanisms for ensuring seamless customer experience across all channels, and brand consistency across internal channels. Secondly, all stakeholders need to align on an internal level with this new brand approach; enlisting all staff members as brand ambassadors who cheer loudly for the new building or brand in your organization.
Steadier Horse To The Front.
Branding is essential if the merger or acquisition is to make sure that it can happen, in terms of financial rewards. This is why you need a proactive branding strategy even before you’re in the market to protect each brand value to existing customers while developing stories for both internal and external audiences.
Two brands can be hard to fuse when the companies are carrying with them differing cultures, structures and processes. Internal branding in a large-scale and comprehensive fashion during M&A can also transform teams into fierce proponents of the new entity and brand, which can then appeal to external audiences. Whatever M&A model you implement, employees must serve as both conduits of high level intelligence and specific target in frontstage and behindstage branding initiatives to yield success.