How Brand Positioning Helps With Smooth M&A Integration And Long-Term Success

By Jaclyn Hesse

Numbers drive mergers and acquisitions. Whether it’s dollars, staff size or market reach, numbers tell the story. But for an M&A transaction to become a lasting success, everyone involved needs to be able to follow the story.

Companies primarily focus on the financial and operational aspects of integration. While that’s understandable and expected, a well-executed brand positioning exercise can be the difference between a smooth transition and a cultural clash. When multiple companies become one, challenges extend beyond combining balance sheets and product lines, integrating codebases, and aligning tech stacks. It’s about harmonizing diverse identities, cultures and visions.

Brand positioning isn’t just logos and taglines. It’s establishing a company’s North Star — a guiding principle that orients everyone from the C-suite to the newest hire. In M&A situations, it becomes a powerful tool for integration, strategic alignment and growth.

Remember, it’s one company now

In our work with private equity firms and their portfolio companies, we routinely encounter the same issue. Companies that are meant to work together remain siloed, and this disconnect becomes institutionalized across various business functions.

The result? Portfolio companies that should be working together end up competing, cannibalizing each other’s business, and ultimately have a negative impact on revenue.

A private equity firm I once worked with acquired three complementary tech companies in the logistics space. On paper, these acquisitions were meant to create a powerhouse that could offer end-to-end supply chain solutions. Months after the deals closed, the three companies were still operating as separate entities.

They had different sales teams pitching overlapping services with inconsistent pricing strategies. Potential synergies were being left on the table, and the combined entity was underperforming. There was no North Star to follow; the company was aimless.

Grow from common ground

What does a North Star look like? IMO Health provides a good example. A longtime leader in medical terminology standardization, the company had recently acquired a healthcare AI firm to expand its capabilities. This acquisition, coupled with IMO’s own evolution, meant it needed a brand positioning that could unify the expanded focus beyond being the “medical dictionary of the digital age.”

We helped craft a new positioning: Data to Decide. This simple phrase encapsulated their expanded mission of not just defining medical language but leveraging their combined knowledge and AI capabilities to enhance decision-making across the healthcare ecosystem.

The new positioning became a rallying cry for the entire organization. It guided product integration, influenced marketing strategies, and even shaped hiring decisions. Employees from different departments found a common language to describe their work and its impact.

In another case, we worked with a global technology company that had recently acquired several smaller, specialized firms. The challenge was to create a unified brand that respected all companies’ strengths while positioning the combined entity for future growth. We developed a positioning that emphasized how their combined expertise could drive innovation and efficiency across various industries.

Internal and external clarity

Brand positioning works so well in M&A situations for several reasons. For one, it forces leadership to articulate a unified vision for the combined entity. By involving employees from multiple organizations in the process, it can also foster a sense of ownership and shared identity.

A strong brand positioning communicates the combined company’s strategic rationale to customers, investors and the industry as a whole. Good brand positioning also provides a narrative foundation on which to build all marketing efforts. Once established, it becomes easier to make decisions about which products, services and processes to keep, modify or discard.

As the North Star for formulating mission and vision statements, brand positioning ensures alignment between strategic direction and brand image. It also reinforces and emphasizes corporate values, shapes company culture and stakeholder perceptions, and drives business decisions from product development to partnerships, and even future M&A.

To a fresh start and continued success

It is crucial to begin the brand positioning process as soon as discussions concerning a possible merger or acquisition start to intensify. If you wait until the deal is imminent, that’s ground you’ll never be able to make up.

Ensure representatives from all companies are involved in the process. This isn’t — or shouldn’t be — about one company imposing its brand on the other. Identify the strengths of each and look for ways to combine them into something greater than the sum of their parts.

And don’t be afraid to create something new. A merger is an opportunity — in some cases, the only opportunity — for reinvention, so take advantage. Once the new brand positioning is established, communicate it clearly and consistently to all stakeholders.

This isn’t just a marketing exercise — brand positioning is part of the repertoire for seamless integration and future growth. Establish a North Star, and let it guide your company to success.

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Jaclyn Hesse is co-founder of Taillight, a full-service branding agency that works with clients from strategy through activation.

Illustration: Dom Guzman