🔧 Unlocking growth with the right brand architecture for buy and build businesses 🔧

As private equity-backed businesses scale through buy and build strategies, brand architecture becomes a pivotal question. While acquisitions drive growth and market expansion, ensuring that a company’s portfolio of brands works harmoniously is critical for unlocking value. At PAN CON TOMATE, we’ve developed a structured approach to help businesses make the right decisions on brand architecture, ensuring that both brand equity and operational efficiency are maximized. The key? Start with a deep understanding of each brand’s value proposition.

Why brand architecture matters

Brand architecture—the organizational structure of a company’s brands, products, and services—shapes how audiences perceive the business. Get it right, and you strengthen brand equity, boost trust, and optimize marketing investments. Get it wrong, and you risk brand dilution, confusion, or inefficiencies.

In the context of buy and build strategies, where businesses grow through acquiring multiple companies, defining the right brand architecture is even more critical. As new brands and propositions are added to the portfolio, the challenge lies in balancing integration with differentiation. Should the acquired brands be consolidated under a single master brand, remain independent, or take on an endorsed or hybrid approach?

A structured approach to a brand architecture

We believe that the right brand architecture should always be informed by the broader business strategy. In a buy and build scenario, brand strategy isn’t just about logos or naming conventions—it’s about ensuring that each brand in the portfolio aligns with the company’s growth goals, market positioning, and operational efficiency.

Here are some highlights of our approach:

1. Map out the value proposition(s)

A brand links a set of associations to a product or service through its name, mark or symbols that provide a compelling promise of value to customers and other stakeholders. Brands create strong associations in the minds of customers. The strongest brands are those with the strongest positive associations. 

The value proposition is at the heart of every brand. It defines what the brand uniquely offers to its audience, which needs it fulfills, and the emotional and functional benefits it provides. To develop a successful brand architecture, it’s essential to map out the unique value of each portfolio brand. 

“We recently provided strategic guidance to a travel company operating in both B2C and B2B markets. Our approach was anchored in the company’s long-term business strategy, followed by a comprehensive analysis of the value propositions across their brands, with a focus on customer perception and differentiation. Recognizing that all brand architecture models present certain challenges, we advised on tailored solutions to mitigate potential risks and ensure alignment with their overall growth objectives.” - Leontien

2. Determine the best brand architecture scenario

We believe that, with the right strategic approach and execution, any brand architecture can be made to work effectively. However, success is maximized when the chosen brand architecture is fully aligned with a company's long-term strategic objectives, ensuring cohesion and sustainable growth. Key here is to carefully analyze the pros, cons and trade offs of the different brand architecture scenarios.

3. Evaluate the synergies and potential efficiencies

Consolidating different brands evidently creates efficiencies, such as a unified marketing team and a streamlined go-to-market strategy. Even without consolidation and keeping brands separate, it is often possible to find synergies between the brands. Can marketing investments, R&D, or customer bases be shared?

"A private equity-backed tech firm acquired multiple SaaS companies in the fintech space. After assessing the value propositions, it became clear that while the core offering was similar (B2B financial software), the brands served different verticals—one focused on enterprise clients, while the other catered to small businesses. A House of Brands strategy was chosen, allowing each brand to maintain focus while leveraging shared infrastructure and sales teams." - Jitske

Our final thoughts:

For private equity-backed businesses, the goal is always growth. But in the context of a buy and build strategy, thoughtful brand architecture decisions can accelerate that growth by maximizing brand equity, optimizing efficiencies and creating clarity for stakeholders. At PAN CON TOMATE, we believe that understanding the value proposition of each portfolio brand is the first step. From there, we can help businesses navigate consolidation, endorsement, or independence—whatever the right path may be—to create a cohesive, scalable brand architecture strategy that fuels long-term success.