Successful M&A narratives are built by human experience

Vincent Roffers, head of strategy at New York-based creative agency Agenda, explores the real reason why so many M&A deals underperform.

After a challenging few years, M&A activity began to recover in the second half of 2025: a trend that industry observers expect to continue in 2026.  What many might not realise is that this growth comes in a time of vastly changing needs for employees as well as leadership. This is a particularly salient issue for leaders in traditionally opaque, highly-regulated and fast-evolving sectors like technology, healthcare and insurance, all of which are quickly consolidating through M&A. 

M&A transactions are amongst the most important and scrutinised decisions a business leader can make. Complex and exhaustive due diligence, integration plans and financials underpin a merger’s success for decades to come.

Yet, despite this arduous process led by bankers, lawyers, accountants, consultants and internal management, reporting from Wharton estimates that 70-90% of deals underperform expectations. Why? It’s not always because of miscalculated valuations, inadequate due diligence or overlooked financials. It’s something more nebulous: meaning. In sectors already perceived as complex and opaque, the gap in meaning widens even further.

Today’s leaders, especially those preparing for an acquisition, need to do more than understand financials and market opportunity. They need to be able to answer the questions employees are asking themselves: Why does this matter? Why should I care? How will this impact my career in a week? A month? A year? 

This requires preparation at every stage of the deal:

• Before the deal: What story are you actually buying and what promises are you implicitly making?
• During the deal: How do you manage the human and narrative tension that emerges the moment two brands collide?
• After the deal: How do you create a coherent experience so that employees and clients feel the deal’s value, not just read about it?

Brand and culture form the operating system that makes or breaks a merger. These forces are what bolsters the reputation and impact of a deal with investors, clients and employees.

Branding brings coherence to the earliest stage of decision making. Companies must invest in a shared internal narrative before the deal. For example, the return-to-office era brought tension, despite leaders’ intentions to reconnect employees post-pandemic. The pandemic years disconnected employees from their company’s mission. They raised questions about the value of in-person collaboration. It’s very easy for this disconnection to combine with the uncertainty of a merger and do fatal damage to company plans.

Meaning and value can close this gap. A distinct story grounds a company’s identity in lived experience, allowing employees to engage with their work more meaningfully. With an aligned narrative strategy, stakeholders, investors and employees see the company’s value clearly ahead of negotiations, reinforcing brand identity and ensuring the company delivers on key promises. This is critical in insurance and healthcare, where credibility is earned, not given, and lost quickly. Technology is home to a truly singular phenomenon, where talent mobility and intense hiring competition makes belief sometimes optional.

During the deal, investments in clear storytelling negotiate the uncertainty that comes with M&A. It cannot be perfunctory, over-scripted or forgettable. The best experiences aren’t measured by attendance but by afterglow. Do people remember it? Talk about it? Advocate for it? M&A moments are no different. Instead of relying on generic messaging, companies that can translate via lived experiences during the deal are better positioned to succeed. Branding builds momentum and belonging in the most fragile phases of the deal, reassuring employees and investors of their shared value and identity. When organisations collide, branding stabilises the human and narrative tensions at play.

Once the deal closes, it is essential to create a coherent experience so that employees and clients can feel the deal value in their daily lives, not just something they read about in passing. Most brand and company storytelling has become so sanitised and over-edited that it loses its credibility amongst the audiences that matter most. We see that, too often, organisations tend to recap impactful milestones with over-polished internal decks and case studies written in corporate-speak that describe outcomes through data and dollar signs, but do not touch on the lived reality of the deal and what it means for all parties involved.

The key for 2026? Be transparent. We are exiting the case study era and entering the unfiltered story era. The organisations that apply this thinking to close the gap between what a deal was supposed to create vs. how people actually live it will win the battle of meaning in 2026.