As mergers and acquisitions (M&A) continue reshaping the healthcare landscape, brand strategy is emerging as a critical driver of integration success.
During a session at Becker’s Healthcare 13th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable, Philip Guiliano, founding partner of BrandActive and Nicole James, senior vice president of communications at BPD, made the case for why health systems can’t afford to treat branding as an afterthought during M&A.
Here are three key takeaways from the discussion:
1. Now or never
Too often, branding decisions are deferred until late in the M&A process, a choice that can have financial and operational consequences. Ms. James stressed that when brand identity is postponed, health systems risk paying for multiple brand transitions and confusing both patients and staff in the process.
“One decision made at the right time can help build a stronger culture,” said Ms. James. “It can help you find some cost savings and it can ultimately improve your reputation. Most organizations miss that.”
Mr. Guiliano outlined how early consideration of brand, just like IT or HR integration, allows costs to be baked into the deal and managed more efficiently. “Five years later you’ve spent three times what you needed to spend and you haven’t actually optimized that deal from a brand experience, from a patient experience perspective, or even from a market and enterprise value perspective,” said Mr. Guiliano.
2. More than a logo
A health system’s brand isn’t just its name or signage. It’s the sum of patient expectations, experiences and trust.
“Brand is our promise to consumers,” Ms. James said. “We don’t own that brand. Our patients, our customers and our consumers own the brand because it is the sum of all of their experiences that they have had with an organization.”
She emphasized that maintaining multiple legacy brands post-merger can erode that promise and sow internal confusion.
Drawing on her own experience managing communications for Texas Children’s Hospital and Memorial Hermann, she emphasized that brand needs to be addressed early to avoid confusion and diluted campaigns that can jeopardize culture integration and clarify the organization’s value proposition to the market.
3. Smart branding strategies
In addition to cultural cohesion, an effective brand strategy can help health systems reduce operational spend and uncover hidden synergies. Mr. Guiliano outlined three financial opportunities that arise from brand integration:
- Capitalize rebranding costs by embedding them into the deal instead of treating them as ongoing operational expenses.
- Optimize implementation by aligning brand rollout with operational timelines and infrastructure updates potentially reducing costs by 20-40%.
- Identify brand experience synergies such as consolidating vendors, signage, collateral and patient-facing materials across merged entities.
The speakers pointed to UC Irvine-based UCI Health as a model for getting it right. In a 2023 acquisition of four community hospitals from Tenet Healthcare, UCI Health made brand strategy a priority before the deal closed. “On day one, we had all of the brand assets updated,” Ms. James said. “We had a whole creative package so everyone felt welcome on day one.”
Branding may feel intangible, but its impacts are concrete, from patient loyalty and physician alignment to payer leverage and M&A ROI. For health system executives navigating deals, the advice from Mr. Guiliano and Ms. James is simple: Don’t punt on brand.
“Don’t do this twice, don’t do it three times,” Mr. Guiliano said. “Moving that element earlier into the deal unlocks synergies.”
