News
Rethinking brand hierarchy in an era of mergers and expansion
08 September, 2025
The pace of business expansion in the region is relentless. Companies once known for a single service are now evolving into multi-solution offerings through acquisitions, market expansion, diversification and the launch of new verticals. For business growth, this is essential. For marketers, it introduces a more complex challenge: how to structure a brand so it remains clear, credible and able to expand as the company grows?
Risks of brand complexity
When a company diversifies quickly, the biggest risk is confusion. Customers may continue to see you only through the lense of your legacy service — people still see you as the company that does X — long after you’ve expanded. Internally, different teams begin telling different stories. Externally, websites, sales decks, and campaigns start to be fragmented rather than cohesive narratives.
The issue is particularly acute in the Middle East, where deal activity is accelerating. According to PwC’s 2024 M&A Outlook, the region saw a 19 per cent increase in cross-border deals in the first half of 2024, with diversification cited as a major driver. More deals mean more complex portfolios and more chances for customer confusion.
Many regional conglomerates operate across real estate, retail, automotive, logistics, and more. Customers may not even realise that the same group sits behind all those brands. Sometimes that distance protects the group, a bad experience in one brand may not tarnish another. But more often, it’s a missed opportunity for cross-selling and a dilution of trust.
The core challenge is this: how do you balance the unity of a corporate identity with the individuality of specialist brands?
Deciding who leads: Corporate brand or sub-brand?
Every company facing this dilemma must ask: do customers buy from the group, or do they buy from the expert brand? If credibility lies in specialist expertise, then sub-brands should lead. But where reassurance, trust, or reputation rests with the parent, the corporate brand must take centre stage.
The risk comes when customers associate you only with one service. If the market still sees you solely as the company that does X, your newer offerings risk invisibility. Kantar’s BrandZ analysis shows why this matters —brands with strong clarity in positioning deliver 76 per cent faster value growth than those with weaker clarity.
Without careful positioning, sub-brands can also end up competing with one another rather than working in synergy. The solution is to give each business unit a clear lane while ensuring that all narratives anchor to a unifying story. From the customer’s perspective, the only question that matters is: who can deliver this best?
Lessons from evolution
Evolving from a single-service provider into a diversified group is rarely a smooth path. Legacy perceptions are sticky. Employees often cling to the brand identity they’ve always known. And shifting internal mindsets can be as difficult as changing external perceptions. McKinsey has highlighted that during periods of restructuring, companies risk a 20–30 per cent drop in employee engagement if staff are not brought along on the journey.
Take the example of Dulsco Group. For decades it was recognised primarily for workforce solutions, later expanding into environmental services. With the acquisitions of Parisima in 2022 and Advance Global Recruitment in 2023, the business had to evolve into a group structure spanning People Solutions, Environmental Solutions, Talent, and Energy Recruitment.
That shift required reframing the parent brand, repositioning heritage as a strength, and creating a portfolio approach that allowed each vertical to stand on its own while still connecting back to the group.
The lesson is not to discard heritage but to reposition it as the foundation for growth. Continuity builds trust. The past becomes a platform for expansion, not a constraint.
At the same time, internal alignment is critical. Teams won’t tell the new story unless they understand why it matters and how it strengthens their own role. Providing them with consistent messaging, tools, and forums for discussion is essential. Without this, even the best brand architecture will fail to embed.
Frameworks that help
Marketers often borrow from classic brand architecture models to navigate this territory. The branded house offers simplicity but can lack flexibility. The house of brands offers autonomy but risks fragmentation. Most regional businesses end up with hybrids, where the corporate brand acts as an umbrella while specialist sub brands carry credibility in their niche.
So, when should you rebrand, sub-brand, or consolidate? Look for the warning signs: customers can’t articulate what you do, internal teams describe the company differently depending on which vertical they sit in, and your website looks like a menu of unrelated businesses. Gartner’s 2023 CMO Survey found that 64 per cent of CMOs believe their current brand architecture is not fit for future growth, proof that this challenge is widespread.
Marketing’s role as strategic leader
In times of structural change, marketing must be the voice of clarity. If marketers don’t frame the story, the narrative will be left to sales teams, clients, or even the media. That’s why brand hierarchy isn’t just cosmetic. It affects sales efficiency, investor confidence and employee alignment.
Marketing leaders therefore have a duty to position themselves as strategic advisors at board level. Decisions about brand structure are not merely creative; they are commercial. Deloitte’s Global Marketing Trends Report 2024 found that CMOs who act as “growth navigators” saw up to 1.8 times higher revenue growth compared with peers.
The temptation is to chase storytelling, but the true role of brand hierarchy is navigation. Customers should know immediately who you are and what you offer. Leaders must remember launching a new logo is the easy part. Embedding behaviours, language, and clarity takes far longer.
Clarity + ambition = impact
If I had to distill the approach into one principle, it would be this: a brand architecture should reflect your ambition but remain simple enough for your customer to navigate with ease.
Serving your audience means stripping out jargon, avoiding unnecessary complexity, and organising your portfolio around how customers buy — not just how you internally structure the business.
Looking ahead, the challenge will only intensify. As governments across the GCC push ambitious diversification agendas and as AI and hyper-personalisation fragment customer touchpoints even further, marketers will need to future-proof brand hierarchies with agility built in.
The brands that succeed will be those that keep clarity and ambition in balance — simple enough to navigate today, flexible enough to grow tomorrow.
Other News & Blogs
