How Brand Strategy Helped Formstack Align Post-Acquisition

Often, the worst part about a doctor’s visit isn’t the visit — it’s the cumbersome forms you fill out beforehand. Manual documentation and workflows make gathering and analyzing data tedious and difficult.

Formstack, a workplace productivity platform, solves this problem. With a suite of data products, including form and survey creation, document generation and data synchronization, Formstack helps companies of all sizes eliminate slow, manual processes.

Problem

Formstack came to us after a string of acquisitions expanded their product capabilities. They sought to understand what the acquisitions meant for their company identity: should the acquired brands dissolve within Formstack, should they retain their identity under Formstack, or should Formstack introduce an entirely new parent brand? The team knew Formstack was at an inflection point and the brand and brand hierarchy should shift to reflect the changes.

The brand hierarchy decision had implications for a number of audiences. Existing customers wanted to know what might change for them, while prospective customers and the market needed to understand Formstack’s value. Existing employees needed to understand the identity, and employees from the acquired companies needed to buy in to the new vision.

Finally, Formstack needed a scalable brand architecture that aligned with the organization’s vision, giving them flexibility for product growth and future acquisitions.

Solution

To determine the brand hierarchy, we solidified the parent company’s product vision.

Formstack had a vision and product strategy but had not earned internal buy-in. We synthesized all ideas from key stakeholders to identify and align clearly on product and company goals.

Then, we guided them through some options for brand hierarchies that fit their vision and strategy and identified the outcomes of different choices. If Formstack became the parent brand, what would that mean for their products, internal culture, and the culture of acquired companies? Formstack, armed with key information, defined a clear and simple brand hierarchy. By defining this strategy, Formstack provided logical “homes” for past acquisitions and created space for future ones.

Takeaways

After discussions and critical internal decisions, we identified the viable solution for Formstack’s new brand hierarchy: Formstack remained the parent brand and acquired brands would dissolve over time into the Formstack platform as the technology and marketing efforts coalesced.

With internal alignment and key foundational decisions in place, the Formstack team was equipped to rebrand themselves, align the rest of the company to their decisions and vision, and start evangelizing marketing and product teams, including positioning, messaging and vision concepts for the new platform.

Learn how our product experts can help your team align after acquisition.