Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are more than financial manoeuvres, they are transformative moments that shape a business’ future. Deals worth billions rely on financial analyses, operational efficiencies, and market synergies. Yet amid the spreadsheets one critical factor often goes overlooked: brand.

Overlooking brand in M&A is like ignoring the foundation of a skyscraper. It may not be immediately visible, but its strength and integrity are vital to long-term success following a restructure.

When you buy a business, you’re not just buying assets or operations, you’re also acquiring a brand. Successfully maintaining or transitioning that brand’s value is as critical as integrating cultures or aligning operating systems. Yet, too often, this vital asset is overlooked, resulting in costly missteps and organisational inefficiencies that could have prevented with a clear brand strategy.

The cost of ignoring brand 

A strong brand isn’t just a reflection of your business, it actively guides it. More than a logo or a tagline, it’s the story or idea that guides your business, the trust that keeps stakeholders on board, and the momentum that carries the organisation forward.

A robust corporate brand offers concrete reassurance, building employee commitment, customer loyalty and competitive advantage. It’s the reason more customers choose Salesforce over Oracle, GE over Honeywell, or why tech enthusiasts camp outside stores for the latest Apple product.

Neglecting brand in M&A can be catastrophic. Take the AOL-Time Warner merger – hailed as revolutionary at its time but ultimately unravelled by poor brand alignment. Cultural clashes and mixed messaging were among the factors that led to a $100 billion loss in market value.

Without a strong brand narrative, even the most promising deal can falter. Employees grow uncertain, customers lose faith, and investors grow wary. Drawn from a career spent advising on brand in M&A,  here are five steps to a clear, compelling brand strategy that connects all stakeholders around a new vision.

1. Act fast to define the narrative

In the absence of clarity, uncertainty often fills the gap. The moment a deal is announced, employees, customers and markets are looking for answers.

A compelling vision and brand strategy calms markets, re-energises employees and conveys confidence to customers. A strong brand strategy, aligned to the business strategy, gives clarity of direction to accelerate value creation and avoid costly delays and transformation fatigue.

2. Build a leadership vision

Without leadership alignment, employees fill the void with assumptions, creating chaos. In any organisation this is dangerous, more so in M&A where leadership is critical to any successful merger. The key to alignment is to address the differences and build on common ground. Involving leaders in defining the brand strategy creates a shared sense of ambition that leaders can buy into and embody to avoid conflicting, competing agendas that derail timelines and delivery of merger synergies.

3. Unite cultures

In the whirlwind of deal-making, brand isn’t just an external-facing asset; it’s deeply tied to company culture, the backbone of any successful merger. A unifying brand provides the foundation for blending disparate cultures – whether it’s balancing agility with legacy or bridging territorial and organisational divides.

Without this, employee discontent and retention issues will undermine even the most strategically sound mergers.

4. Streamline the portfolio

M&A projects are intricate by nature. And when you overlay the often complex and duplicative brand portfolios of the merging entities, this creates huge challenges internally, for employees in managing the portfolio, and externally, for customers in navigating the newly merged business.

Tackling the portfolio may be relegated to the ‘too complicated’ box, when in reality it’s ‘too costly to ignore’ resulting in increased marketing budgets to support a bloated portfolio and lost sales from market confusion.

5. Seize the moment

In the race to integrate merging entities and realise synergies, leaders often overlook the brand’s ability to signal the journey the newly formed business is on, and in doing so, to accelerate progress along that path.

Following every deal there is a moment when the world is watching. From customers and employees to investors and partners, each looking for clarity of direction and evidence of commitments being delivered. Your brand narrative in that moment can define future success, creating emotional connections and market confidence that no amount of planning can achieve.

Ask what do you want to be known for? What’s the message you want to send?

The bottom line: brand is a growth lever

In the high-pressure world of M&A, numbers alone don’t guarantee success. It’s about successfully uniting two organisations, often with very different cultures, customers, and ways of working, into one coherent whole. Neglecting a strong brand narrative risks employee attrition, market confusion and lost trust, all of which erode the value of the deal.

Next time you’re involved in an M&A deal, ask yourself: Are we treating brand as a strategic lever for growth and competitive advantage? Because in today’s dynamic landscape, the winners will be those who leverage brand to accelerate value delivery.

Sally Bye is managing partner at BrandPie.

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