When L'Oréal bought CeraVe in 2017 and General Mills bought Blue Buffalo in 2018, both companies were looking to tap into the remarkable success of these insurgent brands. (Note: We define insurgent brands as those that are growing 10 times their respective categories and that have more than $25 million in revenue in tracked channels.) Both deals resulted in significant growth, with CeraVe and Blue Buffalo ultimately becoming billion-dollar brands within their parents’ portfolios.

Following a period of price-led acceleration from 2021 to 2023, growth of top global consumer goods companies slowed to around 2% in the first half of 2025. At the same time, insurgent brands have been generating a higher share of growth—namely, 39% of their respective categories’ US growth in 2024 (up from 18% in 2021).

Eager to capture some of this growth, incumbents such as L'Oréal and General Mills have relied on a combination of three approaches.

First is the more traditional route of tapping into in-house innovation to launch new brands or rejuvenate existing ones. While this route has delivered a few notable successes—such as Zevo, an advanced insecticide from Procter & Gamble, or Planet Oat, a plant-based milk from Hood—there are few such winners. Among the 29 brands launched since 2000 that have reached billion-dollar scale, only 8 originated from major consumer goods companies.

A second route—leveraging internal corporate venture capital to invest in and nurture promising young brands—has also shown mixed results. Some major companies wound down their venture arms in recent years as a result of modest returns and rising external pressures to focus on core businesses.

These experiences have led more incumbents to increasingly turn to the third route—that is, buying out insurgents. Over the past five years, deals valued at less than $2 billion represented 38% of total consumer products M&A, up from about 16% for the prior five years, according to Bain analysis of Dealogic data. Meanwhile, average deal size has fallen from roughly $900 million in 2014–2018 to about $400 million in 2019–2024.

When done correctly, insurgent M&A delivers results. Despite their size, insurgent-like brands acquired over the past 10 years are making outsized contributions to their parents’ growth profiles. Among seven leading consumer goods companies analyzed, brands acquired over the past 10 years delivered a median of 20% of total company growth, representing about 1.5 times to 2 times their share of sales (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

But success of insurgent brand M&A is far from assured. In fact, for every CeraVe and Blue Buffalo, there are many deals that have not met expectations. Bain’s research found an average 22% growth rate for insurgents two years post-acquisition—a big drop from the average 77% growth rate two years prior to the acquisition.

Why is insurgent brand M&A hard?

Part of that decline can be attributed to natural brand maturity. Another part of it, however, can be attributed to pitfalls throughout the deal process—from diligence and deal structure to post-merger integration. Our analysis identified a range of common reasons why these deals may fall short.

Challenges often start with moves made upstream in the M&A process. For example, misjudgments on longer-term indicators of brand health and relevance of the consumer value proposition may lead to inflated views of a target’s competitive position. Additionally, over-optimism regarding the speed of scaling efforts as well as the ability to leverage the parent’s capabilities to accelerate growth may lead to unrealistic expectations.

But many challenges can also be traced to decisions during the deal structure and integration process. Among these, four common issues include:

• Acquirers are overly reliant on cost synergies that may not be compatible with future organization and operating model decisions.
• Unintended consequences of management team earn-outs and key performance indicators (KPIs) lead to unsustainable short-term growth.
• Companies fail to prioritize initiatives, testing the management team’s capacity and jeopardizing base business delivery.
• Or they don’t fully acknowledge and plan for differences in culture and day-to-day ways of working across the organizations.

Our long-standing research shows that consumer goods companies that engage in frequent M&A (more than one deal per year) outperform infrequent acquirers in total shareholder return (6.9% vs. 5.8%). This holds true for smaller deals as well, where moving up the experience curve can be equally challenging and valuable.

This is why astute acquirers carefully evolve their approach to insurgent brand M&A over time. Consider how Coca-Cola thoughtfully advanced from closely integrating earlier brands to a “connected not integrated” approach with later acquisitions such as Innocent Drinks and BodyArmor.

How the best acquirers accelerate and amplify growth post-acquisition

While it can take years to climb the insurgent M&A experience curve, our work over the past decade has enabled us to identify six best practices to bring insurgent brands to full potential post-acquisition: We'll look at them one by one.

Rally around a joint North Star

Negotiations can be challenging, but Day 1 creates an opportunity to reset relationships and build strong foundations. In the best deals, both parties invest sufficient time in post-acquisition discovery mode to understand each other’s ways of working, respective capabilities, and to learn the insurgent’s special sauce—that is, its rituals, values, and other cultural elements.

Early collaboration should focus on creating both the short- and long-term visions for the partnership, including aligning on the insurgent’s growth ambition, its role within the parent company’s portfolio, and initial perspectives on potential areas for integration (and areas to deliberately leave untouched).

A strong integration thesis should paint a joint vision that the insurgent leadership is equally as excited about as the parent, set bold but realistic aspirations that are grounded in data and input from consumers and customers, and remain true to the insurgent’s DNA.

Early formative weeks invariably set the tone for the years to come. In every interaction, the parent team must strive to build trust by demonstrating genuine openness and curiosity, investing in nurturing authentic relationships, and then following through on commitments.

Chart the path to healthy, metered growth

The most successful acquirers also resist the urge to rely on the traditional consumer goods company growth playbook. Instead, they work closely with the insurgent on a joint growth acceleration plan that marries the insurgent’s “spiky” capabilities with the acquirer’s unique parenting advantages, such as a segmented supply chain or exclusive channel access.

The most effective plans temper expectations on the speed of scaling efforts, instead ruthlessly prioritizing velocity and managing the temptation to rely on distribution and portfolio expansion to spur growth. While CeraVe, Dave’s Killer Bread, and Quest Nutrition all grew distribution post-acquisition, not only did they sustain velocities but also significantly improved over time. They did this by not overextending nor over-proliferating their portfolio (see Figure 2).

For example, when Coca-Cola acquired dairy insurgent fairlife in 2020, the businesses focused on velocity over distribution as the brand scaled. The strategic prioritization, paired with a targeted consumer activation model, allowed fairlife to grow awareness and household penetration as it scaled its Core Power protein shake, achieving velocities that were two times greater than its largest competitor.

Insulate to accelerate

Despite the best intentions, an acquirer’s bureaucracy often takes over, and it is easy for insurgent leadership teams to spend more time on stakeholder management than running the business.

While few have cracked this, one solution is to establish a joint board structure with representation from both entities. With ultimate responsibility for performance and governance decisions, the board can shield insurgent leadership from the need to report up the incumbent’s ladder and strategically ring-fence people as well as dollar resources.

Furthermore, to mitigate short-term delivery pressures, insurgent KPIs must be fit for purpose and focused on consumer metrics that serve as leading indicators to gauge brand health and performance, such as quarterly household penetration, new buyer and repeat rates, and hero SKU velocity.

Integrate with intent, not urgency

Most successful integrations take a phased approach to transformation, starting with a minimal list of nonnegotiables that are required to avoid legal or reputational risk—for example, statutory reporting or food safety assurance. Failing to hold a high standard on what qualifies as nonnegotiable can lead to unintended consequences. After buying an insurgent snack company, one incumbent mandated an early migration to its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The ERP integration required significant management bandwidth, which diverted focus from business-building priorities—including new product development and commercial acceleration—resulting in a 12-month setback in brand performance and plan delivery.

Beyond the nonnegotiables, establish triggers that signal readiness or requirement for greater integration—for instance, deceleration in the insurgent’s growth, key leadership turnover, or changes in the risk profile, such as product recalls, active litigation, and declining customer service levels.

Solve the leadership question ASAP

The incoming leadership team is often seen as the lifeblood of the insurgent. As such, it is critical to clarify the role of the general manager/founder and key leaders ASAP, keeping them engaged by activating senior mentor relationships, including them in parent company development programs and celebrations, and potentially identifying expanded future roles.

Turnover, however, is inevitable post-acquisition. Most incoming leaders depart from operational roles within the first two years—roughly 60% have departed by 12 months, and about 75% by 24 months, with no clear correlation between tenure post-acquisition and long-term success of the insurgent.

To prepare for the future, acquirers should create a succession pipeline upfront, with a plan to immerse and upskill the candidates. It is important to cast a wide net for talent. Our research shows that 80% of the time, an insurgent’s next leader is sourced from outside its ranks.

Instill insurgency in the integration process

Given that insurgent leadership is often not only responsible for day-to-day business operations but also for executing on the post-acquisition transition, the best acquirers implement a minimum viable process of initiatives, meetings, and governance.

For example, instead of traditional workstreams, they stand up discrete, cross-functional missions targeted at unlocking near-term value through moves such as addressing specific sales opportunities or implementing early interventions in plants. These mission teams are then stood down as outcomes are delivered.

Ideally, the individuals helping lead these missions have the ability to navigate within the parent organization while also having an insurgent mindset and deep empathy for the target.

Insurgent M&A entails some real challenges. But, when done appropriately, the benefits to both incumbents and insurgents can be profound, with execution playing a critical role in determining success. These six best practices can be the difference between a deal that fails to deliver and one that helps an incumbent inflect its long-term growth profile.