Acquisitions are relentless in tech. Even in the middle of the pandemic, brands including Cisco, Microsoft, Facebook, VMware, Atlassian, Zoom, Intel, NVIDIA, Verizon, Docusign, BMC Software and Accenture acquired one or more companies. With each acquisition comes a series of branding questions. What to do with acquired names? How does the overall brand story change, if at all? For example, after SAP paid $8 billion for Qualtrics in 2019, it shifted much of its messaging to improving customer experiences, a promise enabled by Qualtrics technology.
For Isabelle Papoulias, CMO of Mediafly—a sales-enablement and content management software company—the answer to these questions changed after back-to-back acquisitions over a six-month period. The first acquisition was business as usual. But two weeks before announcing the second acquisition, Papoulias received a “stop the presses” call from her CEO. He wanted a new campaign. She took this as an opportunity to rethink everything, leading to a complete overhaul of the brand, go-to-market messaging and tactics.
CMO discusses Mediafly's integrated approach in support of new campaign on Ad Age.
Read the full Q&A on Ad Age: How Back-To-Back Acquisitions Led to a Tech Brand Overhaul
Listen to the Episode: Keep Calm and Acquisition On