I love watching that Netflix show, “Chef’s Table”.
In a Michelin-starred restaurant’s kitchen, every person has a station. Every station has a role. Every dish has a prep list.
I think about this idea for brands going through mergers and acquisitions, too. If you can refine a few ingredients—brand architecture, branding process, branding partner—you can create a system that scales.
Here’s how:
Don’t save brand architecture for “later.”
Brand architecture answers big questions: What do each of these parts do? How are they alike, and how are they different? How is the sum greater than the parts?
When there’s a team of people, organizational history, and a lot of emotional baggage tied to each of those parts, determining the answers gets really tricky.
That’s why, ideally, firms should invest in the brand architecture framework at the platform stage. Not after acquisition #4.
Defining brand architecture early on won’t prevent every challenge. There will always be unknowns that are impossible to predict. (Our plan is to keep absorbing regional players, but what if we acquire a tech platform? Expand into new verticals?) That’s where the brand system needs to be created with built-in flexibility, so it can stretch to fit those difficult-to-predict opportunities. Clear naming conventions and visual consistency from day one makes future bolt-ons so much easier.
(Chefs have a phrase for this: “mise en place,” which is French for “everything in place.” It’s getting all your ingredients prepped and organized on your cooking space before you start—otherwise you’ll be scrambling to find the paprika while the bechamel sauce is on the edge of burning.)
Speed to market beats perfection.
I ask this question on every qualifying sales call: when are you looking to launch the new brand/website?
About half the time, I get the same answer: “yesterday.”
I totally get it. Patience was never my virtue, either. But great things usually take a bit of time.
In mergers and acquisitions, timing is everything. Every month spent deliberating on brand strategy and planning the rollout is a month not growing revenue. Branding needs to be swift, so teams can move from strategy to rollout.
And sticking to a tight timeline can mean better results, too.
The reason is simple: a fast-approaching, drop-dead deadline forces teams to be decisive, not consensus-driven.
As Mike wrote, great brands aren’t created by committee.
Too many rounds of revisions leave brand identities watered down and weak-willed.
And launching a brand that’s miles ahead of what you started with, but a few feet short of pleasing every person on the board? That’s still miles of progress made.
John on the board will get used to the green in the new logo. Or he’ll forget all about it, when he sees the next quarterly report on revenue growth. Either way, ship it.
Add value with a repeatable process.
I would have loved to be in the room where it happened.
About 20 years ago, a few members of the Atomicdust team locked themselves in a room for a week or two with one goal: define the process for the Atomicdust Branding Program.
They outlined a two-phase approach we continue to use today. (Details have evolved of course, but the bones are the same.)
Every branding project you’ve seen from Atomicdust since has followed that process—even though the brand identities that come out of it are totally unique.
Operational consistency is vital in any professional services company. When operational consistency is applied across a portfolio of companies or house of brands, the value compounds.
Just like a private equity firm might apply the same IT vendor, HR platform or CRM system across their portfolio, using the same branding agency comes with major benefits. A standard process, timeline and quality bar means predictable costs and faster onboarding for new acquisitions.
The agency doesn’t have to be us (although it’s cool with us if it is). But pick one with a proven process, and stick with it.
The best kitchens looks effortless from the dining room. Nobody sees the prep list, the station roles or the two decades of refining the process behind it. They just taste the dish, experience the service and want to come back.
That’s the goal for mergers and acquisitions, too. Define the system early, move fast once it exists and repeat the process. Do that, and nobody on the outside sees the architecture, the sprint to launch or the playbook behind it either.
They might not even consciously notice the brand—they just connect with it.
