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Our Perspective

What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.

Hidden Friction

When organisations harden brand architecture too early, the structure can turn into a barrier. It looks tidy on a slide, yet it hides commercial friction: offer overlaps, hesitant cross‑sell, and journeys that don’t add up. Customers feel the gap first. They can’t see what connects, what’s next, or why they should move from product A to product B.

Inside, the strain is operational. Sales teams optimise for individual products while product and technology talk platforms. Marketing sits in the middle, translating competing truths. In our experience with platform migrations across mid‑market organisations, this usually shows up as slow decisions, contested naming, and launches that take too long to land.

Platform Role Before Labels

The core issue isn’t terminology; it’s role clarity. Decide what the platform is there to do commercially—where value accrues, how it compounds across offers, and the promise customers can rely on. Then choose an architecture that matches how people buy today, with a line of sight to how they’ll buy tomorrow. Only then does naming make sense.

Evidence shows why instincts can be misleading: McKinsey notes that in mergers, roughly 40 percent of companies converge on a single legacy brand, yet the label alone doesn’t resolve how offers fit or value is shared. The lesson is simple: architecture follows strategy, not the other way round.

Operating Guardrails

Once the platform role is defined, teams need guardrails they can use without debate. Keep them practical and testable.

• Codify platform and product promises, and the hand‑offs between them.
• Set decision rights for launches, integrations, and retirements.
• Define migration rules for names, packages, and pricing over time.
• Publish a simple naming ladder that mirrors buying choices.

These guardrails convert aspiration into execution. They reduce ambiguity, keep governance light, and make every launch an argument for the platform rather than an exception to it.

Decisions Leaders Own

Senior leaders unlock growth by choosing where coherence beats local optimisation—and by sticking with it.

• Decide where brand equity should concentrate and where it should remain local.
• Align incentives and measures to the platform promise, not just product targets.
• Shape the customer pathway: eligibility, sequencing, and proof points for the “next buy.”

The result is momentum you can feel: clearer stories, cleaner experiences, and a purchasing logic that encourages expansion. When the architecture mirrors how value is created and shared, trust builds, adoption deepens, and the platform earns permission to stretch into new spaces.

Sources:

• Integrating marketing and brand in M&A: The way to superior growth — McKinsey

1. Brand Architecture for Scalability Post-M&A
2. Repositioning Your Brand for Growth Beyond the Familiar
3. Brand Messaging: From Product-Led Growth to Enterprise Success