Preparing your B2C brand for an M&A with a compelling brand narrative

You may find your B2C brand contemplating mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as a way to unlock growth or optimise value. However, beyond the financial and operational considerations of securing an M&A deal lies a crucial factor that could sway potential partners or buyers’ interest in your brand—the brand narrative.

A strong and consistent brand narrative is a key tool to demonstrate your B2C brand’s market value, and stand out amongst the competition, as well as its potential for future growth and alignment with a potential partner or buyer company. 

Here are the steps to creating a great B2C brand narrative:

Step 1: Pitch on the right level of interest

Before anything else, when building out your brand narrative, you must understand how your product fits into your consumers' lives. This helps especially when you’re navigating between high-interest (e.g., gadgets and fashion) and low-interest categories (e.g., scaffoldings or sponges).

Tailoring your message to align with your product's natural appeal is key.

High-interest products naturally spark interest and your brand can elevate its appeal to address it at a broader level and reach your target customers beyond just the purchase experience.

For low-Interest products on the other hand, simplicity is key. Communicate your value proposition quickly and clearly, ensuring it's easily understood within seconds, while your broader mission should remain in the background of your narrative.

If you’d like to be guided through these tools fully, reach out to us.

Step 2: Market Gap Exploration

In a marketplace brimming with competitors, carving out your niche is essential. In every industry, there are a few key things that most companies focus on. But it’s by avoiding these common features and identifying less competitive areas that you’ll be able to really establish your brand among the competition.

Ettyq’s market gap exploration process takes a brand through a comparison process between your brand and your competitors to gather insight into the commonalities and differences between these brands. 

Avoid the dogfight

After gathering these insights use the trends spotted to develop a brand narrative that stands out and offers a unique perspective.

Step 3: Focus on values, not features

To differentiate your B2C brand you need to delve deeper and uncover your brand’s unique values, rather than relying solely on highlighting product features. While your brand's value is shaped by its alternatives in the market, honing in on the distinctive benefits will set your offerings apart from the competition.

Ettyq’s value extraction approach allows brands to dissect their competitive landscape by examining both direct and indirect competitors, analysing the unique features that differentiate your brand and connecting these features to customer values. You can then distil these unique features and values into compelling value propositions.

This way you’re not only able to differentiate yourself but directly communicate to customers why this differentiation is important to them.

Step 4: Unconscious Market Activation

This tool uncovers consumer 'need states' by analysing search behaviours and underlying motivations. 

It helps a brand identify the customer's everyday needs you're competing to meet on a deeper level, such as understanding the need before the need and what leads to customers recognising their need. 

Address the problem, not a solution provider

Armed with these insights, your brand can proactively connect with potential clients early on, even before they're aware of the need your competitors fulfil. With this in mind, your brand narrative can be shaped to facilitate this connection.

Step 5: Be different, not better

The quest for brand superiority often leads companies down the path of comparison—a futile exercise that yields little meaningful differentiation. 

Instead of striving to be 'the best,' successful B2C brands focus on being different. By embracing their distinctive qualities and avoiding direct comparisons, they create a unique brand identity. This distinctiveness forms the core of your brand identity.

The Only > The Best

This process facilitates precise comparisons between your brand and its competitors, looking specifically at the objective differences between them. These differences must be hard facts and no subjectivity whatsoever.

Focus on areas like geography, customer segments, or workflows. 

From there you can start to create a picture of the uniqueness of your brand.

Step 6: Value Verification

Remove all subjective adjectives and superlatives, including words like 'best,' and 'brilliant’ from your messaging and review the revised statements to ensure they plainly articulate your brand's unique value without embellishment. 

Is there any value left?

By stripping away subjective terms, you can strengthen your strategic direction and communicate a clear and impactful brand message.

Step 7: Consistency Check

Etty’s Consistency Check emphasises the importance of prioritising consistent messaging in each area of your brand strategy. 

Start with jotting down a clear proposition which captures your brand’s essence. This isn't just about what you sell but about the story you're telling and the specific value you're bringing that no one else can.

Based on this proposition, you’ll be able to conduct deep dives into different areas of your brand such as product, branding, and distribution in order to identify what action needs to be taken to ensure these areas resonate with your brand’s narrative.

Consistency beats intensity

Crafting a compelling brand narrative should be the foundation for your brand if you’re preparing for an M&A and want to demonstrate your value.

If you’d like to work through these steps and tools in depth, reach out to us.

You can also explore more ways design and design thinking can help you in the pre-M&A process by checking out our other pre-M&A toolkits.