Here at Bluetext, we’ve seen our share of M&A’s. One of our first big assignments, when we launched the agency seven years ago, was to relaunch ITSolutions – a roll-up of nine separate IT government contracting firms – into a new unified entity that we rebranded as Acentia. The brand strategy we developed worked well for the new company and Acentia achieved its management’s goal of being acquired. We have since applied our rebrand process to a variety of new M&A-driven organizations, including the GE spinoff of its Rugged Embedded Systems into Abaco Systems.
The one thing that we have learned is that M&As are tricky waters to navigate, with a wide variety of financial and legal hoops to jump through to seal the deal, and the challenge of stitching together two separate brands into one cohesive brand story – or splitting off a new brand – is a beast of its own. But the payoff can be enormous for our clients, ranging from accelerated growth to a rewarding financial transaction.
While a successful rebrand for an M&A is not easy, given the right approach and process, it can be a gamechanger. There are four critical elements that we’ve found to be critical to a successful M&A rebrand.