Brand Mergers: A Checklist for CMOs
Date: May 24, 2023
Time Reading: 5 min.
By: The BlueOcean Team
Going through a merger or acquisition can be a transformative experience for any organization. As the dust settles and the integration process begins, it’s crucial for CMOs to seize this opportunity and strategically evaluate their brand investments. Mergers and acquisitions provide a unique window for CMOs to assess their marketing strategies, refine their brand positioning, and make impactful decisions. Here we’ll explore a comprehensive checklist for marketers going through a merger, highlighting key areas that CMOs should focus on to ensure a successful transition and maximize the value of their brand investments.
1. Evaluate Your Brand Strategy
A merger brings together two or more brands, each with its own brand identity and positioning. As a CMO, this is the perfect time to evaluate your brand strategy. Start by assessing the core values, mission, and target audience of each brand. Identify any overlaps or conflicts and work towards creating a unified brand strategy that reflects the combined strengths of both organizations. In some cases, you may find you need to form an entirely new brand. Consider conducting market research to understand how your brand is perceived, overall brand equity, and what changes might be necessary to align with the new business landscape.
2. Conduct a Brand Audit
A merger often necessitates a thorough examination of your brand assets and messaging. Conduct a brand audit to evaluate the visual identity, messaging consistency of your organization. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of each brand’s logo, taglines, marketing collateral, and online presence. Determine which elements should be retained, modified, or discarded. Look for opportunities to consolidate and streamline brand assets, ensuring a cohesive and compelling brand experience for customers and stakeholders. Collaborate with designers, copywriters, and brand consultants to develop a refreshed brand identity that aligns with the merged entity’s values and objectives.
3. Revisit Your Target Audience
A merger can potentially bring changes to your target audience and customer demographics. Take the time to re-evaluate your customer profiles and personas. Analyze their needs, pain points, and expectations in light of the new business landscape. Consider conducting customer surveys, interviews, or focus groups to gather valuable insights. This exercise will help you understand how the merger may impact your customers and allow you to refine your marketing strategies accordingly. Tailor your messaging, channels, and campaigns to resonate with the evolving needs of your target audience, ensuring that your brand investments effectively reach and engage the right customers.
4. Align Your Marketing Tactics
During a merger, it’s essential to align your marketing tactics across both organizations. Identify the most effective marketing channels and strategies used by each brand and assess their compatibility. Determine which tactics can be integrated, enhanced, or discontinued to achieve maximum impact and efficiency. Collaborate with the marketing teams from both sides to create a unified marketing plan that leverages the strengths of each brand. This collaboration will foster cross-pollination of ideas, encourage knowledge sharing, and promote a unified approach to achieve the shared business objectives.
5. Communicate Effectively
Transparent and consistent communication is key during a merger. Develop a comprehensive internal and external communication strategy to keep stakeholders informed and engaged. Craft clear messages that convey the purpose and benefits of the merger, while also addressing potential concerns and uncertainties. Leverage multiple channels, such as emails, newsletters, social media, and town hall meetings, to ensure effective communication at all levels. Align your messaging with the new brand identity and consistently reinforce it throughout the transition process. Open and honest communication will help build trust, alleviate fears, and create a positive perception of the merger among employees, customers, and other stakeholders.
Tebra’s Story: How a merger helped Kareo and PatientPop to bring forward a stronger parent brand
A merger presents CMOs with an incredible opportunity to reevaluate their brand investments and set a strong foundation for the future. By following these checklists and taking a proactive approach, marketers can successfully navigate through the complexities of a merger and emerge with a revitalized brand that reflects the combined strengths and aspirations of the new entity.
At BlueOcean, we love working with brands that face down big challenges, and we recently partnered with a team of marketers facing a merger of two brands, into a new parent brand. Knowing that a new parent brand was on the horizon, Kareo and PatientPop invested in BlueOcean to track their two merging brands to evaluate the strengths and opportunities prior to the merger announcement. The challenge was to define the new Tebra parent brand and re-define the original brands now as product level child brands – leveraging data to make more confident decisions along the way.
Using BlueOcean, Tebra began to tackle the challenge:
- The team created an operating model to analyze and assess performance of both the new parent brand and the newly-defined product level child brands. They were able to identify priority metrics in Share of Voice, Message Consistency, and Brand Reverence and analyze performance of those over time, allowing them to establish baselines and goals for the new brand.
- They used BlueOcean to conduct their brand audit, identifying key strengths and weaknesses of both brands compared to their competitors, which led them to focus on enhanced website experiences for each brand by updating messaging and content to better align with the most critical themes
Lindsey Keefner, Sr. Director of Corporate Marketing said:
“Our team was facing a huge challenge: to build an entirely new parent brand from two existing child brands. There is no social listening tool or brand tracker that could have given us the real-time, always on insights we needed to develop a rock-solid launch strategy. BlueOcean gave us the information we had to have to optimize our story in the context of our competitors, and eventually nail the launch of our new brand: Tebra.”
BlueOcean can help you with your brand merger checklist
If you are looking to embrace the transformative power of mergers and acquisitions, and use them as catalysts to drive your brand’s success, you need holistic insights & always-on data because you don’t have the time to wait for a brand tracker. Fill in the form below to set up time with someone from BlueOcean and learn more.
