In a recent Times Higher Education article, Professor Jane Harrington described the creation of the LASE University Group, bringing the universities of Greenwich and Kent into a new group structure, as “not for the faint-hearted”.
I get it.
There are regulatory hurdles, governance and leadership questions, employment arrangements, staff uncertainty, systems to integrate and two established institutional identities to protect.
But for me, a merger like this happens twice. Once on paper, and once in people’s heads.
While brand strategy cannot solve all of those problems, it can help answer a question running quietly through almost every one of them:
What does this new organisation mean?
That’s not a cosmetic question.
It’s a strategic one.
Start with the purpose, not the structure
Merger due diligence naturally examines finances, assets, liabilities, governance, academic portfolios and operational compatibility. All the usual suspects.
I’d add another: brand due diligence*.
This isn’t as prosaic as do the logos work together?
But:
What does each institution mean to its people?
What does each believe about itself?
Where are the cultures compatible and where might they clash?
What should remain different?
What becomes possible together that neither could credibly achieve alone?
And, most importantly: Is there an idea for the combined organisation sufficiently compelling to justify the disruption required to create it?
That’s positioning at its most useful. Not a strapline, but an organising idea against which decisions can be made.
Information is not the same as meaning
Transformations generate enormous quantities of information.
New structures, reporting lines, systems, policies, names and the rest. Staff may understand perfectly well what is happening while remaining unconvinced about why.
And when organisations don't provide a compelling story that explains the journey, people create their own.
“This is really a takeover.” “It’s just about cutting costs.” “Our university is going to disappear.”
Silence doesn’t just create uncertainty. It creates alternative stories.
This is where storytelling becomes a leadership discipline rather than a communications exercise.
I’m not suggesting storytelling that's designed to make difficult decisions sound better, but a clear and credible account of:
Why change is necessary
What becomes possible
What will be preserved
What will change
What remains genuinely undecided
And how people will eventually experience the difference
Brand in this context isn't about making the merger sound good. It's about making the merger make sense.
Being bigger isn't the same as meaning more.
Mergers inevitably produce impressive numbers. More students, staff, courses, campuses and research. But that's scale and scale isn't yet a proposition. The strategic question is what that scale enables.
Because we’re larger, what can students now do?
What can researchers achieve?
What can employers access?
What can communities expect?
What problems can we address that neither institution could tackle as effectively alone?
The job of positioning is to translate scale into consequence.
Don't erase difference. Explain the value of connection.
LASE presents an especially interesting brand challenge because Greenwich and Kent retain their individual identities within the group.
That means the task isn't necessarily to create uniformity. It’s to explain the value of connection. Greenwich can remain Greenwich. Kent can remain Kent. But LASE needs to become the explanation for what they can now accomplish together.
That gives the group brand a much more interesting role: not simply another identity competing for attention, but an organising idea connecting otherwise distinctive institutions.
And it leads to perhaps the biggest lesson for other universities considering mergers, federations, shared services or group structures.
Brand belongs in the room much earlier
Brand still tends to be introduced too late into transformations of this kind.
Once the strategy is agreed and the organisational structure established, attention turns to the name, identity, website, launch and communications.
But the most important brand questions arrived long before then:
Why should we come together?
Why these institutions
What do we believe in common?
What should remain different?
What can we credibly promise together?
How will people make sense of the relationship?
What behaviours will demonstrate that the proposition is real?
Those aren't communications questions. They’re questions of strategy, culture, organisational design and leadership.
Because ultimately, a merger happens twice.
The first happens legally and organisationally.
The second happens in people's heads.
And the second may prove considerably harder than the first.
* Brand due diligence doesn’t get spoken about enough. I've been part of many mergers and acquisitions, both as a leader and recipient. Success or failure (or at least an extremely long and painful route to financial success) would have been made easier if the culture of the organisations was more aligned from the start of the process and a programme put in place to foster it once the technical merger had concluded. Culture is a critical component of a brand in how the organisation behaves both internally and externally. More focus and understanding of this will lead to better outcomes – of that I have no doubt.