Post-acquisition branding
Article Date: Aug 25 2009Establishing the right brand for a newly acquired company has kept many a CEO awake at night. StrategicFusion’s Stephen Rogers looks at how to get it right
The time spent on negotiating a deal can often be so time-consuming that little thought is given to how a newly acquired company will be integrated after terms are agreed.
Stephen Rogers, the managing director of brand consultancy StrategicFusion, which has worked with the likes of Toyota-Europe, SpinVox and more recently Balfour Beatty Engineering Services after the merger between Balfour Kilpatrick and Haden Young, provides five top tips to getting the brand right for an M&A deal:
1. A timely process
Don’t leave the branding and communication to the market until the very end of the merger or acquisition. It's easier and more effective if the branding is an integral part of the overall process.
In the Balfour Beatty deal, we were involved from the very beginning of the project, and it definitely contributed to its success. Time is always a challenging factor and from a branding perspective, attention to detail is critical.
2. What do you do?
It’s vital to identify what is at the heart of the newly combined business. We came up with the notions of “single focus” and “total service” for the Balfour Beatty deal. Single focus requires that a company is both acting as one and is also absolutely focused on serving the customer. With regards to total service, it conveys the breadth that the new company has to offer and the range of sectors that it covers.
3. Brand strategy
Once you’ve identified what the business is all about, you need to understand what it is you are trying to say about the company and how you are differentiating it from competitors. When communicating a message about the business, you have to think about how it will be received by customers, suppliers, investors and any other stakeholders.
4. Employee reaction
It is essential to think about the impact of the branding both externally, but also internally. That’s no easy task when you have employees in multiple sites as you have to think about the best way of communicating the message to everyone, whether it means face-to-face meetings, webcasting or print materials. It's about going through the processes and being rigorous.
5 After the announcement
You need to focus on the announcement of the deal itself, but you also have to think about the next six to twelve months. This is particularly important internally – it's about embedding the message within all employees, not just senior management.
Good communication will have a positive impact, but without constant impetus the urgency of the message will be lost. If you embed the message of what the business is about and how people should respond over a period of time, that's when you get lasting and meaningful change and you can support the overall corporate strategy.
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