How to Determine Branding for Acquired Companies, or Merged Companies
Marketers are often faced with how to deal with branding of products or features they launch. This a somewhat easy process if there is a brand framework in place to help them make decisions on what is worthy of being ‘branded’ vs describing a new product feature. Branding often gets much more tricky when companies are acquired or merged together. There are too many factors that come into play that cloud the decision making; emotions, internal politics and preferences to name a few. This Branding Decision Framework is designed to help guide the decision making process.
This framework was developed to help guide decisions for the management of brands and sub-brands. I have had the challenge of dealing with this issue in too many instances of my career, where many people would have different opinions whether to do parent branding, child branding or creating a new brand altogether. These opinions were fed by opinion and instinct only, without a proper way to evaluate the problem. Now, I'm a fan of instinct, but it was good to have some framework to guide the discussions and that the advantages/disadvantages were thought through.
This framework is simple and uses the questions that I have had over the times I've needed to consider this decision. Feel free to add to it or edit it based on your experience and give me feedback on what you have adjusted to make it work for you.