Branding Strategy Insider helps marketing oriented leaders and professionals like you build strong brands. BSI readers know, we regularly answer questions from marketers everywhere. Today we hear from John, a Chief Marketing Officer in New York, New York who asks…
My company has acquired another organization, which has its own family of brands. What implications will this have on my brand and my brand management efforts?
Thanks for your question John. There are product and branding implications, both of which you should have considered before the acquisition. (There are also organization-alignment issues, which are beyond the scope of this response.)
For instance, there might be product overlap. What do you intend to do about that? Is the acquired organization in unrelated product/service categories, complementary product/service categories or the same product/service categories? If the latter, how much product/service overlap is there and will you rationalize the offerings to reduce or eliminate the overlap?
The next set of questions are branding related. For the brands that your organization purchased, do you intend to maintain them as separate brands, brands endorsed by one or more of your brands or sub-brands of one or more of your brands or do you intend to rebrand them with your brand names? The relative strength of all of the brands in question should at least inform this decision. Do the brands have high awareness and positive associations among their target markets? If they do and you are purchasing them, part of the price you paid is likely to be for the value of the brands themselves. In this instance, it would unwise to eliminate these brands, at least in the short-term.
If your intent is to eventually rebrand everything with your brands’ names, then you might consider a transition period in which the acquired brands are linked to the acquiring brands before they are eliminated.
Brand architecture decisions, especially related to mergers and acquisitions, can be complicated. The Blake Project would be happy to guide you through this process. Thanks again for your question John, we wish you much success with your brand architecture strategy.
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