Brand Challenge
The things that made your business valuable are suddenly at risk
A merger, an acquisition, a change in leadership.
These are the moments when client relationships waver, teams lose their sense of direction, and the brand equity you have spent years building can start to erode. But this is where reinventing your brand can be your most powerful tool.
The problem
Why transitions put everything at risk
Major change is disorienting, and most M&A’s create a brand problem nobody budgeted for. Two businesses become one, but the brands, the names and the customer-facing identities don’t merge as cleanly as the paperwork. You end up with duplication, contradiction and confusion. Teams are unsure which name to lead with. Customers wondering what changed and whether it affects them.
Left unaddressed, the brand architecture and strategy question slows everything down. Sales conversations get complicated. The story of what this new business actually stands for never gets told clearly enough to land.
How do you know your brand is at risk during a transition?
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Did you know…
The solution
What does good look like?
Getting the brand right after a merger is not just about speed. Pace is important, but so is the cadence.
Before any visual brand identity work begins, the structural questions need answers.
The answers to those questions shape everything that follows: the narrative, the identity, the way the business shows up to clients, to prospects, and to the team.
The questions we start every project with…
What does the combined business stand for now?
Which brand names carry equity worth keeping?
What needs to retire?
What does this new business stand for that neither did alone?
What the work looks like in practice
No two transitions are the same.
Some need structural clarity first: mapping what exists, deciding what stays, what merges, what retires. Others are ready to move straight into repositioning and identity. A few need support taking the new brand all the way through to internal launch and beyond.
What is consistent is the outcome. Clients who stay, teams who know what they are part of and a business that comes out of the transition stronger than it went in.
Work that solved the challenge
Rebrand: Informa
Building harmony across multiple sub-brands
Informa Connect had accumulated more than 2,000 specialist event brands through years of acquisition. Each held real market value. Together they created a fragmented, inconsistent landscape that was slowing the business down.
The challenge was not just visual. It was giving 12,000 people across 30 countries a brand they could use with confidence, and a system that could absorb future acquisitions without starting again each time.
We built a flexible identity framework, a digital brand management platform, and a rollout plan that brought internal teams along rather than presenting at them.
£10m+ in online event sales within the first year of launch
141% uplift in conversion rates across event platforms
£200k+ operational savings from streamlined brand logistics
Gold at the Transform Awards for Best Brand Consolidation
The brand rollout strategy of the future. A triumph!
Informa
Typical investment
Every business is different, so our support is always tailored.
While we create bespoke proposals for each client, here’s a top-level framework of the services most often requested.
Not sure what you need? Get in touch, and we’ll help you.
Discovery and architecture
For businesses at the start of a transition who need clarity before committing to any identity work.
What’s included?
- Brand audit
- Portfolio mapping
- Architecture recommendations
- Report: brand equity worth protecting
- Clear brief for what needs to change and why
Repositioning
Everything from Discovery & Architecture, plus the strategic and creative work to build the new brand.
What’s included?
Everything from Discovery, plus:
- Full brand strategy
- Narrative and messaging
- Visual brand identity design
- Full guidelines
- Set of applications (ready to use)
- Training for your teams
Launch and embed
Everything listed, plus the plan to make the new brand land before it goes anywhere near the market.
What’s included?
Everything from The Repositioning, plus:
- Internal engagement campaign
- Leadership communications toolkit
- External launch planning
- Brand guardianship retainer
Relevant articles and tools
Culture is the new brand: how CMOs can lead the next wave of change
How to manage brand equity during and after a merger and acquisition
Is brand the critical driver of M&A success?
What’s Your Brand Architecture Really Costing You?
How we can help
Learn more about our B2P approach
Let’s talk about your business.
Discover how our Business to People approach can unlock new relevance, resonance and results for your B2B brand. Reach out to book a session with Vicki, our founder.
FAQ
How To Protect Brand Value During M&A
We’ve gathered the most common questions people ask about this topic and answered them clearly and simply below. Hopefully you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for.
Why do so many mergers and acquisitions fail on the brand side?
Over 80% of mergers and acquisitions fail because organisations neglect how the brand is communicated, both externally and internally. The commercial logic of a deal can be sound while the human side, how employees, customers and partners experience the change, gets left until too late.
Should we merge brands immediately or keep them separate after an acquisition?
There’s no single right answer, and it depends on customer familiarity, market positioning and internal culture on both sides. What matters more than the decision itself is making it deliberately, with a clear rationale you can communicate, rather than defaulting to whichever brand shouts loudest internally.
How do we protect brand value during the uncertainty of a merger?
By treating internal communication with the same rigour as external messaging. Employees who don’t understand what’s changing, and why, disengage quickly, and that disengagement shows up externally faster than most leadership teams expect. A clear organising idea, communicated consistently, protects equity on both sides.
What's the biggest brand mistake companies make during M&A
Assuming brand integration is a rebrand exercise that happens after the deal closes. In reality, the brand conversation needs to start alongside the commercial due diligence, not after it, because by the time employees and customers notice a gap between old and new, trust has already started to erode.