Most rebrand advice ends at the handover. You get the strategy, the identity and the guidelines. Then the hard part, moving a live business over to the new brand without losing anything along the way, is left for you to work out.
So we’ve tried to write it down. This assumes the new brand is finished and signed off. It covers the launch itself in four phases, in the order we’d run them.
The launch, in four moves
Phase 1: Inside first (2–3 weeks before launch)
Tell your team before you tell anyone else. When customers have questions about a rebrand, they ask the person they usually deal with. If that person hesitates, it looks like nobody planned it. Walk the team through the strategy behind the change, and spend more time on that than on the logo. Then agree a one-line answer to “so why the change?” that everyone can give without thinking.
After that, contact the people outside the business who’d be put out to hear about it from Instagram. That usually means key clients, partners and suppliers, plus investors if you have them. A short personal message a few days before launch is enough.
Then put the asset kit together. You’ll need logos in every format, templates, email signatures, social avatars and banners, ad creative and anything printed. Keep it all in one shared folder with a consistent naming system, and give one person ownership of it. It’s admin, but a surprising number of launch-day problems come down to someone grabbing logo_final_v3_USE-THIS.png from the wrong folder.
Phase 2: The switchover (launch week)
Everything customers can see should change at once. That covers the website, social profiles, email and invoices, and packaging if you can manage it. Pick one window, ideally a quiet one, and do it all then. If people see the old brand on your Instagram and the new one on your site for two weeks, they’ll assume something’s gone wrong. Behind the scenes, you can sequence things however suits you.
The website needs the most care, because this is where rebrands actually lose money. Keep your domain if there’s any way to. If you have a new name and it means a new domain, you’ll need to:
- set up permanent (301) redirects from every old URL to its matching new page, one to one, rather than sending everything to the homepage
- use the Change of Address tool in Google Search Console, and update your sitemap and analytics
- update your social profiles, directory listings and anywhere else that links to you
- keep the old domain and its redirects running for at least a year
Get this right and your rankings will probably dip for a few weeks, then come back. Get it wrong and you can lose years of search visibility in an afternoon.
If you have a new name, it also helps to spell out the link between the old one and the new one. We’d put “New name, same team” in the site’s announcement bar and keep the old name in brackets in email signatures and social bios for about three months. We’d also write a short page explaining the change that support can point people to. Your customers spent years learning the old name, so they’ll need a while to adjust.
Phase 3: The announcement
Start with the reason for the change. Hardly anyone outside your business cares that the logo looks different. What they want to know is whether anything changes for them, like a new service or a clearer offer.
Pick one story and tell it properly. It might be a note from the founder, a short video or a before-and-after written up like a case study. Whatever it is, put it out everywhere on the same day. A rebrand is one of the few times people will pay attention to your marketing without you paying for it, so use it for something better than “we’ve got a new look.”
Share the process as well: early sketches, rejected routes, how the system works and the small details that carry the idea. Process posts tend to get shared more than the finished logo. They also help with the people quietly wondering what it all cost, because they can see where the work went.
Phase 4: The 90 days after
Go looking for the old brand, because it’ll still be around. It turns up in webinar decks, on partner websites, in directory listings, and on a checkout page nobody has opened since 2021. Keep a shared list and work through it every week. Every old logo a customer spots makes the change look less deliberate.
Compare organic traffic with your pre-launch figures. Keep an eye on branded searches for your new name if you have one, direct visits to the old domain, and support tickets from confused customers. A dip in the first few weeks is normal. If numbers are still falling after week six, either a redirect is broken or the message isn’t landing, and you’ll want to find out which.
Keep posting about it after launch day, too. Follow the announcement with the full case study, a post on the details, and a results update at six months. Plenty of people will miss the first post entirely.
Frequently asked questions
How do you launch a rebrand?
Brief your own team first, so customers hear about it from a person before they see a post. Switch everything customer-facing in one go, including the website and redirects. Announce it everywhere on the same day, starting with why you changed. Then spend about 90 days tracking down leftover old branding and following up on the launch.
Will a rebrand hurt my SEO?
Not if you handle the migration properly. Keep your domain if you can. If it has to change, 301 redirect every old URL to its new equivalent, use Search Console’s Change of Address tool, and leave the redirects in place for at least a year. Expect rankings to wobble for a few weeks before they recover.
Should a rebrand launch all at once or gradually?
Anything customers can see should switch together, because a brand that’s half old and half new looks like a mistake. Physical stock like packaging or signage is different. Running it down over a set period is normal, as long as you’re upfront about it.
How long does a rebrand launch take?
Allow three to four weeks from finished identity to launch day. That’s two or three weeks for producing assets and briefing people, plus about a week for the switchover and testing. After launch, plan on roughly 90 days of cleanup and follow-up.
