Skydance’s subtle rebrand proves which company has brand power

Atop the Warner Bros. water tower in Burbank, California, a crew of workers added a small line of text below the WB logo on Monday to mark Paramount Skydance’s $81 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. The iconic water tower now says “A Skydance Corporation” below the WB Shield logo—a tiny change many onlookers might not give a second thought to, yet one that signals a megamerger of some of America’s best known media brands and intellectual property. The new media conglomerate assembled under billionaire and Skydance CEO David Ellison will bring together movie studios; networks like CNN, CBS News, Discovery, MTV, and Nickelodeon; and characters including Batman and Harry Potter. While the new company has a deep bench of content, what it doesn’t have is a strong, singular brand point of view. Like its new water tower, the Skydance Corp. isn’t looking to make Skydance the main thing. Instead it’s building a house of brands. [Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images] Opting for a house of brands offers lesson in brand equity That approach seems to indicate that the company isn’t trying to be a public-facing representation of its subsidiaries, like the Walt Disney Co., which centers …