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21 July 2025 | Issue #101

In this issue:

• What Happens When Your Company Gets Acquired (And You’re in Charge of the Brand)
• The Website Is No Longer the Hub
• OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Agent: An AI Assistant That Actually Acts
• Polaroid Debuts a Powerful Anti-AI Analog Campaign
• What Do Colors Mean in Different Cultures?
• I'll be on the Business of Marketing podcast on 22 July
• Design Quote of the Week

What Happens When Your Company Gets Acquired (And You’re in Charge of the Brand)

On my birthday in 2013, I got a gift I didn’t want: news that we had been acquired.

Acquisitions are a chaotic time. There is a lot of uncertainty because decisions must be made in numerous areas of the business. There can be a rush to claim power, and things can get messy if communication isn’t clear.

While at Extreme Networks, I led creative and digital teams through several acquisitions. The advantage of doing this work multiple times is that our team got really good at knowing what had to be done, in what order, and then executing on that plan.

The first acquisition was the biggest project I ever worked on, but we’ll come back to that.

The second acquisition was pretty straightforward. We were acquiring the wireless business unit from Zebra, which Zebra had previously purchased from Motorola. These poor people were acquired twice in a short amount of time. They hadn’t even finished their previous acquisition before they were sold off to Extreme.

Our job was to rebrand all of the Zebra wireless content so it was all branded as Extreme. It was then posted to all the proper places such as the marketing website, the customer portal, communities, and more. Myself and a few others from the marketing leadership team flew out to Chicago to meet with the Zebra marketing team to outline what both teams needed and what our process would look like.

The third and fourth acquisitions were challenging because they happened at the same time. Three weeks after Extreme announced its intention to acquire Avaya’s networking business, it announced it was also acquiring Brocade’s SRA (switching, routing, and analytics) business. At one point, I flew out to San Jose, CA, to attend a three-hour planning meeting at Brocade.

We worked with both teams making sure that all assets were rebranded and live on the website when the deal was signed and the press release went out. Our comms team had a master spreadsheet that tracked every touchpoint along the way.

We were lucky to have great partners on the other side of these acquisitions because they knew where everything was and what needed to come over to be rebranded.

These were easy compared to the first acquisition.

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Start from Scratch

The first acquisition I was a part of was the largest and most daunting. I had been working as the creative services manager at Enterasys. On my birthday in 2013, it was announced that we were being acquired by Extreme. Long story short, our CMO, Vala Afshar, was named CMO of the new combined company. This was good because it meant I would be leading the creative efforts during the transition and beyond.

Our new CEO informed Vala that once the deal closed, we had 90 days to come up with a new visual identity and rebrand everything. A few years earlier, this CEO had been the CMO of Apple, so he knew about doing the impossible.

At Enterasys, we were 10-15 days away from launching our new site when news broke that we were being acquired. Now, we needed to update the design and development to reflect this new company that was twice the size. We re-engaged the design agency (Fresh Tilled Soil) and the development agency (Convertiv). For new work, we brought in a branding agency (Tank) and a video agency (IndieWhip, now The Video Bros) to help create the new face of our company.

Coordinating all of this work, along with updating everything with the Enterasys or Extreme logo – from business cards to tradeshow booths to data sheets – meant that we didn’t sleep much during the early part of 2014.

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Process

When I started at Enterasys, my first order of business was getting all the source files from our agencies and establishing a system to catalog them and the work that needed to be done. We used Box for our file storage, and I assigned a number to each asset. That way, when an edit request came in, we could easily reference the asset number and make sure we were editing the most recent files.

During the Enterasys acquisition, one of the marketing managers on the Extreme side asked if I had worked at an agency. I had, but I wanted to know why she asked that. She said she could tell by how I organized the process, tracking system, and files.

We had hundreds of pieces of collateral that needed to be dropped into new templates. I’m still so thankful that we had a dedicated team of designers who would work tirelessly to get all of that work accomplished. We knew what time the lights automatically went out in the building (10:00pm) and what time they turn on (6:00am). We basically lived on delivery food and soda for a couple of months.

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Results

While it was a lot of work, it gave us an opportunity to reset and do things correctly. These acquisitions gave us a chance to not only update all of the marketing collateral, but also to get the product documentation into properly branded templates.

We didn’t have to go through that awkward phase where sales or customer support people were still using outdated assets with the old Extreme logo, or worse, something with the Enterasys logo. Everything was fresh and ready to go on day one.

Oh, also on day one, we launched the new website, announced a partnership with the NFL, launched our biggest product in years, and had an analyst panel livestreamed from our Salem, NH office.

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Pre-announcements

One thing that you don’t often hear about is the work that goes into the initial acquisition announcement. If either company is a public company, which Extreme is, it means that there could be insider trading if the acquisition information falls into the wrong hands. I would have to sign a form saying I wouldn’t tell anyone the information I had, and I couldn’t buy or sell any stock related to the deal.

It also meant I couldn’t tell my team what was going on.

This was tricky since we all worked on the same source files and the same website. I remember with the later announcements having to make staging pages on our website in areas that my web manager wouldn’t see. I would get it approved, back it up, then delete it. Once the press release went out, I would turn on those pages and push the announcements on social (I also oversaw digital and social, in addition to creative).

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People choose unhappiness over uncertainty – Tim Ferriss

Having done this work multiple times means I know the most important parts: Communication and planning. The biggest part of any acquisition is being as transparent as possible with everyone affected by this. Acquisitions often come with layoffs … sorry, I meant efficiency improvements. People understandably freak out about this. If you can get people to stop worrying, they’re able to focus on the monumental task ahead of them. That’s where planning comes in.

You have to have a solid plan. You will learn things each time and improve the process. You also have to let everyone know there will be hiccups along the way. Projects of this magnitude require a lot of people to do the right thing when they’re supposed to. Just remember that your priorities may not align with their priorities.

This is where building trust and being a good partner will help more than you could imagine. There were times when I had to call in big favors in order to hit some deliverable timelines. Most of the time, I’d hear things like, “You’ve bailed me out so many times, whatever you need.”

Start by being helpful. That’s how you earn the trust you’ll need when the impossible shows up on your to-do list.

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Read Further

For the later acquisitions, Kapost was our marketing ops system, and they did a write-up about our process.

I also wrote about the Enterasys acquisition on my website.

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And if you need any help with this, please reach out.

Let's chat

Booking for August I have space for one or two more consulting clients. If you need help with digital strategy, creative direction, AI and marketing, or brand development, let’s talk. And if you’re building out a team and looking for someone full-time, I’m open to the right opportunity. ​

​ NEWS AT THE INTERSECTION OF MARKETING, DESIGN, & AI

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🧭 The Website Is No Longer the Hub

Over on Duct Tape Marketing, John Jantsch argues that your website is no longer the center of your marketing universe—and AI is now the gatekeeper to customer journeys.

• A New Starting Point: Buyers often get what they need from AI-powered summaries before ever clicking a link, making it essential to structure your content for visibility before the click.
• Think Ecosystem, Not Destination: Static landing pages aren’t dead, but your content now needs to live across multiple channels—feeds, chatbots, AI tools, even branded GPTs.
• My Take: This is a topic that's coming up more often. We still need websites, but they are no longer the center of our universe. I was lucky enough to participate in a roundtable with John last week on this topic (and others).

​​Keep reading​​

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🧠 OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Agent: An AI Assistant That Actually Acts

On The Verge, Hayden Field walks us through OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Agent, a powerful upgrade for ChatGPT that combines browsing, research, and even task execution within a “virtual computer” experience.

• From click to action: Unlike previous tools, Agent can autonomously navigate web pages, fill forms, run terminal commands, access APIs (like Gmail), and produce outputs—though it’s currently slow and occasionally unreliable.
• In control, with guardrails: You remain in the loop—Agent pauses for your approval before any irreversible action and allows you to interrupt at any time. It’s designed to handle multi-step workflows safely, but it won’t log in or make purchases just yet.
• My Take: It's here! This is what we've been hearing about AI agents for a while.

​Keep reading​

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✏️ Polaroid Debuts a Powerful Anti-AI Analog Campaign

Polaroid’s latest “The Camera for an Analog Life” campaign smartly pushes back on AI and screen overload—reminding us that some memories can’t be replicated digitally.

• Real over digital: With bold lines like “AI can’t generate sand between your toes,” the posters evoke nostalgia and invite viewers to reconnect with tangible moments.
• Strategic placement: Positioned near Apple Stores, Google HQ, and JFK Airport, and boosted by offline walking tours, the campaign disrupts tech-saturated spaces and reinforces the brand’s analog ethos.
• My Take: Campaigns like this are going to help. Being human is the antidote to AI slop.

​Keep reading​

​ THE VISUAL MARKETER

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🌈 What Do Colors Mean in Different Parts of the World?

Colors have meanings. But did you know those meanings differ depending on your location? Different cultures apply different meanings to colors.

This past week, I shared a carousel on LinkedIn that breaks down colors across the globe, and I highlight a couple of fun facts.

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This info was taken from my book, The Visual Marketer.

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RECENT AND UPCOMING ENGAGEMENTS

On Tuesday, July 22nd, my appearance on The Business of Marketing will be going live. On this episode, A Lee Judge and I discussed a range of topics. In this preview clip, we talk about the importance of knowing which tools to use and when to use them.

I'm looking forward to seeing Lee and many others the Content Entrepreneur Expo in Cleveland next month. This will be my 4th CEX, and I can't wait to catch up with the folks who inspired me to write The Visual Marketer.

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A couple of weeks ago, I was a guest on Vativ's roundtable where they introduced their latest offering, Integrated Marketing Management.

For companies in the ServiceNow ecosystem, this could really help marketing teams.

Thanks to Ben Doyle for inviting me.

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If you're looking for podcast guests, or want to collaborate on something, shoot me a DM.

DESIGN QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Everything is designed. Few things are designed well.” – Brian Reed

My AI disclaimer: I write the main story and additional sections. For the news section, AI writes the summary, and then I contribute My Thoughts. If AI generates the images, I include the prompt so you can see how I got to that image.

Thanks for reading!

–Jim

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