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May 14, 2025
6 min read
How to retain and strengthen brand equity post-M&A
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are high-stakes moves, and the aftermath can get messy if branding isn’t handled carefully. Customers get confused. Competitors take advantage. Employees feel disconnected.
A poorly executed brand strategy can make even a great acquisition feel like a loss. This isn’t a fringe case — according to studies examined by Harvard Business Review, 70–90% of M&A activity fails to deliver expected value. While not all of that failure is due to poor branding, lost brand equity following M&A activity often:
- Damages customer loyalty
- Diminishes competitive advantage
- Results in lost sales, profits, and long-term business success
In this article, we’ll cover why brand equity is at risk post-M&A, how to choose the right consolidation strategy, and the practical steps to strengthen your brand post-acquisition.
Why brand equity is at risk post-M&A
Merging two companies means merging their identities, values, and customer perceptions. Without a clear strategy, this can lead to:
- Customer confusion: Disjointed messaging and inconsistent online experiences leave customers uncertain about the company's offerings.
- Brand dilution: An uncoordinated web presence weakens brand distinctiveness.
- Erosion of customer trust: Misaligned brand values or abrupt changes to familiar digital touchpoints without adequate communication can make customers skeptical.
- Lost differentiation: Inconsistent online branding can push a company into a generic market position.
⚠️ Warning: Don’t ignore shareholder perception. Investors care about brand stability just as much as customers do. If your company is publicly traded, monitor their responses post-M&A.
Example: HP x Autonomy – ❌ Unsuccessful Brand Strategy
In what case studies now call an “unmitigated disaster,” HP acquired Autonomy in 2011 in a bid to improve its position in the software sector. But the deal turned disastrous when HP later accused Autonomy's management of financial misrepresentation. This led to an $8.8 billion write-down for HP, significantly impacting its financial standing and tarnishing its brand equity.
The debacle underscores the importance of due diligence and strategic alignment in mergers and acquisitions (M&A). HP's failure to effectively integrate Autonomy and the subsequent fallout highlighted how missteps in M&A can erode brand value and stakeholder trust.
Choosing the right brand consolidation strategy
No two M&A deals are the same, and that means there’s no one-size-fits-all brand strategy. Some companies fully merge. Others keep distinct brands under one umbrella. The key is making a strategic choice that aligns with your business goals and market position.
Three common post M&A brand strategies:
1. Transform two brands into one unified identity. This is often the best choice for category leaders consolidating their brand power, but it risks alienating one (or both) customer base and losing existing brand goodwill.
Example: Exxon x Mobil Merger – ✅ Successful Brand Strategy
In 1999, Exxon and Mobil’s $80 billion merger closed, uniting the USA’s two largest oil and gas companies under ExxonMobil. Instead of eliminating one brand, the company combined both names to retain brand equity and customer trust. This approach leveraged Exxon’s dominance in fuel and Mobil’s strength in lubricants, ensuring continuity while signaling industry leadership. Today, the merger is considered one of the most successful in history.
2. Hybrid Co-Branding: Maintain both brands and websites, with clear cross-links and shared design elements to signal partnership. This is often temporary, with both brands existing side-by-side before eventual integration, to help ease the transition while retaining customer trust. If left too long, it may result in market confusion.
Example: Twilio x SendGrid Acquisition – ✅ Successful Brand Strategy
Twilio's acquired SendGrid in 2019 and chose to maintain SendGrid as a distinct brand while integrating its email services into Twilio's broader communication platform. Post-acquisition, the companies adopted a co-branded logo and a new color palette that reflected a blend of both brands. The strategy preserved brand equity, reinforced developer trust, and positioned Twilio as a comprehensive customer engagement provider.
3. Maintaining Separate Brands: Keep both brands alive to protect brand equity and give yourself time to gradually align messaging without alienating loyal users. Maintaining separate brands often makes sense when each serves a distinct audience or holds significant existing brand equity. Sunsetting a well-known brand can be risky — strong name recognition, customer trust, and market authority aren’t easy to rebuild.
Example: Salesforce x Slack Acquisition – ✅ Successful Brand Strategy
Salesforce maintained Slack’s unique brand identity and website after the acquisition. By adding “from Salesforce” beneath the Slack logo, they preserved Slack’s existing brand equity while clearly signaling the connection to Salesforce.
To inform your brand consolidation strategy, you need to consider the existing brand equity of each company, the desired market narrative, and the overlap in customer bases.
Questions to ask when deciding if/how to consolidate:
- What’s the brand equity of each company? Analyze the perceived value and loyalty each brand holds in the market. Assessing metrics like brand awareness, reputation, and share of voice can help guide whether brands are blended or one brand leads.
- What story do you want to tell the market? You need justification that explains the "why" behind the move and reframes it as a value-add for customers, not just an internal efficiency play. A strong brand narrative can help the new entity own its space and maintain customer trust.
- Are customer bases overlapping or distinct? Understanding how much customer overlap exists between companies will shape your consolidation approach. If bases are highly distinct, preserving separate brands (at least initially) might prevent alienating loyal segments. If there's significant overlap, merging under a unified brand could simplify messaging and deepen loyalty.
- How do product offerings align? Misaligned product portfolios can dilute brand clarity and slow growth. Before combining brands, consider whether the products naturally fit into a cohesive suite.
- What’s the long-term growth strategy? Consolidation should support your future plans. Think beyond immediate efficiencies: Will one brand better enable category leadership? Are you building toward a broader platform vision? How you consolidate now can either improve brand equity now or force costly rebranding efforts later.
Retaining and enhancing market perception
A strong post-M&A brand strategy uses the transition as an opportunity to strengthen market perception. This requires intentional messaging, visual consistency, and clear communication with customers and stakeholders.
Key steps to retaining and enhancing market perception during M&A:
- Audit & assess brand equity: Evaluate brand awareness, customer sentiment (through NPS, reviews, and support data), competitive positioning, and share of voice.
- Clarify the value proposition of both brands or the new, combined entity so customers understand what’s changing (and how it benefits them).
- Monitor search trends and social sentiment to detect early signs of confusion or brand perception shifts so you can address them or pivot as needed.
- Control the narrative: proactively communicating changes to customers through owned channels, like the website, email, and social media, and paid media.
Example: HP x Compaq Merger – ❌ Unsuccessful Brand Strategy
HP attempted to integrate Compaq but struggled with brand dilution and customer confusion. A lack of clear messaging and misaligned brand positioning led to declining market confidence. The website and product transitions were inconsistent, contributing to a loss of sales and brand equity. Eventually, HP discontinued the Compaq brand entirely.
Measuring brand equity post-M&A
Once the brand transition is in motion, ongoing measurement is critical. Tracking the right KPIs ensures that brand equity is preserved (or ideally, strengthened) post-M&A.
Key metrics to monitor include:
- Brand awareness
- Customer sentiment & NPS
- Market share
- Customer retention
- Pipeline health
Best practice is to track both hard and soft data to get a good mix of quantitative performance metrics and qualitative user feedback. We recommend:
- Monitoring website analytics: Track metrics like user engagement, bounce rates, and conversion rates to assess user response to the changes.
- Soliciting user feedback: Implement surveys or feedback forms to gather insights on user satisfaction and areas needing improvement.
- Analyzing search engine performance: Monitor search engine rankings and organic traffic across both brand websites or the new, merged website.
- Assessing customer behavior: Analyze user behavior on your website using tools like MS Clarity and monitor support tickets. Try to detect signs of confusion.
Why you need a brand expert during M&A
Figuring out how you manage your branding is one of the most important aspects of M&A, but it’s often an afterthought for in-house teams who are already spread thin.
Enter Tiller.
We take the onus off your internal team and specific branding services based on your M&A strategy — whether that’s crafting a new brand identity or strategically evolving your identity to tell a new market story. And, if you’re not sure which strategy is best, we’re happy to provide an unbiased perspective.
Finally, as a web and brand specialist, we can help implement your brand changes intentionally on your reimagined website, ensuring a seamless transition for your most critical touchpoint.
