So you just found out that your company is going to close on an M&A deal that's been in the pipeline for months.

Your M&A integration team has a checklist of dozens of decisions to make, but now brand has taken center stage, and all of a sudden you have a big new responsibility on your plate.

You may be getting lots of strategic branding questions, including things like "Are we going to keep the acquired brand in market or retire it?" or "Which brand name are we going to use in which market?" Or maybe you're getting asked about the impact of branding on stock valuation.

What's your next move?

In nearly 20 years of leading brand integration engagements during M&A, I've found that there are three important steps you should focus on:

1
Assemble The Right People and Process

Getting off on the right foot and making sound branding decisions starts with pulling the right team of people together.

Inside Support
in every company there's a handful of highly-coveted people who really know the company, where the data lives, and how to facilitate decisions. Given that this type of work is complex and multi-stakeholder, I typically suggest at least 2 individuals who can serve as all-purpose stewards of brand integration.

Outside Advisory
getting brand strategy right during a merger and acquisition is critical to avoid risks that could undermine the value of the deal, such as loss of brand equity, damaged reputation, customer confusion, and disengaged employees, to name a few. Find a focused team of senior, technical brand strategists with extensive M&A experience. Avoid bloated teams with junior consultants and/or a primary focus on design vs. strategy.

Surrogates & Decision Makers
assemble a working team of 5-7 senior folks across business areas that can serve as a sounding board for executive decisions. Separately, identify key c-suite leaders who you need to make the ultimate decision on brand strategy and start engaging them now.

I also highly suggest that you develop a plan for the integration that takes into account all relevant milestones on the business side (e.g., LOI, close, etc.) but also key moments where a brand launch makes the most sense.

2
Quickly Model Your Brand Strategy Options

There are a range of options for branding your M&A deal, from using your current brand, to create a new brand, to leveraging the brand you just acquired. Getting to the right strategy takes time for sure, but it helps to map out hypotheses at the start and flesh out the pros and cons of different scenarios. This kind of rapid prototyping helps the team spend more effort focusing on more likely scenarios and less time on scenarios that we are very unlikely to happen.

3
Establish Your Fact Base

Have your Inside Support team assemble any and all data relating to your company's brand and your acquired brand. (If you cannot engage with the company you're acquiring, you'll have to rely on competitive data you have in house.)

Partnering with your Outside Advisory team, conduct an audit of data and quickly identify any gaps on either brand. Then depending on your needs, scope out both qualitative and quantitative research to understand what matters most to stakeholder and drivers preference for brands and how both brands deliver on these drivers.

Fresh research will take weeks (maybe months) to execute, but it is typically a critical component useful in making the strategy recommendations and facilitating decisions with your c-suite.

With these three steps outlined above, you should be well positioned to create some momentum and progress towards making a sound decision on the branding of your M&A deal--and, in the process, start sharing hypotheses for and eventually answers to the strategic branding questions that you face on a daily basis.