rebranding v1.0.0

name: rebranding description: Run a rebrand without losing the equity already earned: diagnose the real problem before any design, audit names, marks, colours, and associations with a scored equity audit sheet, decide scope (refresh, reposition, evolutionary rebrand, or revolutionary rebrand) with a decision worksheet, clear the new name and test recognition, then roll out with a transition narrative, a dual run bridge, staff and customer messages, and a dated sweep of every place the old identity lives. Triggers when someone asks to rebrand, rename a company or product, change a logo or identity, merge two brands into one name, or fix a name that no longer fits the offer.

Rebranding

Purpose

Change the identity a company or product trades under while keeping the recognition, trust, and associations that took years to build. The output is a diagnosed scope, a scored equity audit with a bridge decision for every recognition anchor, a cleared new name, a tested identity, and a rollout plan with staff and customer messages and a transition inventory that reaches empty.

The definitions come from Muzellec and Lambkin (Journal of Product and Brand Management, 2007): rebranding creates a new name, symbol, design, or combination for an established brand to develop a differentiated position. Evolutionary rebranding changes positioning and aesthetics gradually. Revolutionary rebranding changes them in a major, identifiable step, usually with a new name. The equity audit uses Aaker's five groups of brand assets (loyalty, awareness, perceived quality, associations, and proprietary assets such as trademarks) and Keller's test for customer based brand equity: people react more favourably to the branded offer than to the same offer under an unknown name.

Workflow

1. Diagnose before design. Write the diagnosis paragraph from references/diagnosis-and-scope.md: the specific problem, the evidence, the measurable cost, why a refresh or reposition would not fix it, and what happens if nothing changes. If the paragraph only works with vague words like modern or fresh, stop and get evidence from customer interviews, lost deals, confusion data, or a legal opinion.
2. Decide the scope. Run scripts/scope_decision.py on the eight scored questions. Accept its verdict: refresh or reposition only, evolutionary rebrand, revolutionary rebrand on the table, or do not start yet when there is no owner, budget, or rollout window. Record the level too: corporate, business unit, product, or several levels.
3. Audit the equity. Fill in templates/equity-audit-sheet.md for every element a customer meets: name, wordmark, symbol, colours, packaging or premises form, phrases, sounds, characters, domains, and handles. Score each element from evidence with scripts/equity_audit.py. List customer associations in customers' own words and mark each one keep, build, or leave behind.
4. Set the bridge for every anchor. Any element with recognition 3 is a recognition anchor. Each anchor gets a written decision before design starts: keep it, carry it over in evolved form, or dual run old and new until the new form tests at the same findability. See references/worked-rollout-plan.md for a bridge applied to a real shaped case.
5. Choose and clear candidate names or marks. Run the clearance sequence in references/clearance-and-accessibility.md: USPTO Trademark Search at tmsearch.uspto.gov for exact, variant, and sound alike marks in the relevant classes, then state registries, common law use, domains, handles, and the registers of any market the brand will enter. Judge by likelihood of confusion, not exact match. Get an attorney clearance opinion for any rebrand that matters, and file promptly once a name clears.
6. Design inside the audit, then test recognition. Design work must protect the keep list and may only spend equity the audit marked as spendable. Test the new identity in a realistic setting: a shelf, a search results page, an app list, a street frontage. Measure whether people find and identify it, and compare against the pre-agreed pass line and the old identity baseline.
7. Check accessibility in real use. Test every colour pairing the brand guide will allow against WCAG 2.2 AA: 4.5 to 1 for normal text, 3 to 1 for large text and for information carrying non-text elements. Build darker text variants instead of killing a failing brand colour, and never carry information by colour alone. Check the name spoken and typed: people should say it, spell it, and type it after one hearing.
8. Write the transition narrative. One sentence anyone can repeat, stating the new name, the reason in customer terms, and what does not change. Back it with three proof points about continuity: people, product, terms. Continuity leads, strategy second, because customers protect their routine before they evaluate a plan.
9. Brief staff before customers hear anything. Send the staff message, answer questions, update support scripts, and call partners and major customers personally. Use the messages in references/worked-rollout-plan.md as the pattern and rewrite them in the company's own voice.
10. Roll out in phases with a dual run. Internal first, then dual run at the highest contact points with a bridge line such as formerly known as wording, then the full switch, then retirement of the bridge on a named date. Keep the strongest recognition cue stable while the name moves, where the scope allows it.
11. Sweep the transition inventory until it is empty. Work templates/rollout-checklist.md: signage, packaging, web, social, legal records, listings, templates, support material, and redirects. Repeat the sweep at week 12. Every old identity still live gets a switch date or a written exception with a date.
12. Measure against the baseline and honour the rollback line. Record branded search, findability, repeat purchase, and confusion contacts before launch. Review at week 1, week 4, and month 6. If the pre-agreed rollback trigger fires, pause, restore the bridge at full size, and review the decision honestly instead of pushing on to save face.

Output Contract

Deliver these six pieces, in this order:

1. Diagnosis paragraph: problem, evidence, measurable cost, why smaller fixes fail, cost of doing nothing.
2. Scope decision: the scripts/scope_decision.py answers and verdict, the level of change, and the two strongest arguments against rebranding at all, answered honestly.
3. Equity audit: the completed sheet and scripts/equity_audit.py output, with every recognition anchor named and its bridge decision written next to it.
4. Clearance record: every search run, every near mark found, the decision on each one, filing details where a filing was made, or a plain statement that clearance is still outstanding and design is not signed off.
5. Rollout plan: phases with dates, dual run points, the transition narrative, the staff message, the customer message, and the partner contact list.
6. Measurement pack: baseline figures, targets agreed before launch, the rollback trigger and who can call it, and the transition inventory with its current count of old identity items still live.

Operating Rules

1. No diagnosis, no design. A rebrand brief that starts with colours or logos before the problem paragraph is written goes back. Design is the most expensive way to discover the problem was pricing, product, or distribution.
2. Protect recognition anchors even when the team is bored with them. Staff see the identity daily and tire of it years before customers do. Boredom inside the building is not evidence about the market.
3. Remember Tropicana, 2009. The orange with a straw image was replaced by a glass of juice, shoppers could not find the product, sales fell 20 percent in the first two months, and the original packaging returned within weeks. Before removing any strong cue, name the cue customers actually use to find the product and prove the replacement works in a findability test.
4. Remember Gap, 2010. A new logo launched with no customer involvement and no clear reason was withdrawn after about a week. A change customers cannot explain to each other needs either a real reason they can repeat or a smaller scope.
5. Match the size of the change to the size of the problem. A refresh fixes dated execution. A reposition fixes a wrong position. Only a name or mark that misleads, is blocked, or carries damage the smaller fixes cannot outrun earns a rename.
6. Clearance comes before commitment. Never print, sign, or announce a name that has not passed federal, state, and common law checks in the markets it will trade in. In the United States, rights come from use, so an unregistered local user can block a name a federal search alone would pass.
7. Budget the whole change, not the design fee. Cost the inventory: signage, packaging stock write off, legal and filing fees, redirects and listings, staff time, partner updates, and the dual run period. A scope decision made without the inventory cost is a guess, and the checklist in templates/rollout-checklist.md is the costing base.
8. Staff first, always. Nobody who works for the brand should learn about the new name from a customer, a post, or a delivery of new signage. Brief, answer questions, and give staff the one sentence narrative before any public step.
9. Dual run where recognition is at risk. Parallel identities, an endorsed form, or a formerly line all work as bridges. The bridge gets a retirement date at the time it is created, or it becomes permanent clutter.
10. Keep one cue stable while another moves. Changing the name, symbol, colour, and packaging form in the same step removes every route customers had to recognise the product. Sequence the changes so at least one strong anchor is constant through the switch.
11. Set the rollback line before launch, in numbers, with a named owner. Decide what findability drop, cancellation rise, or confusion volume triggers a pause while everyone is calm. A team that sets the line during a bad week will set it to protect the launch instead of the customers.
12. Report the equity result honestly at month 6. Which kept associations survived, which new ones formed, what the change cost against the scope budget. A rebrand that missed its targets and gets reported straight teaches the organisation more than one that gets declared a success by press release.