Overview
From day-to-day execution to long-term growth, checklists keep complex initiatives from drifting off course. Rebranding is no different. A comprehensive rebranding checklist provides structure for your rebranding project, ensuring brand consistency while protecting brand value and brand recognition throughout the transition.
By anchoring the process in a clear branding strategy and a disciplined brand audit, you can evolve branded assets, clarify brand personality, and align internal teams and every brand ambassador around the new direction without losing the equity you’ve already earned.
Determine your rebrand “why”.
Rebrands often start with momentum and excitement, which makes it easy to skip the most crucial step: clearly defining why you’re rebranding. That answer becomes the foundation of your entire rebranding journey. It informs the brand roadmap, guides the rebrand launch, and keeps every decision in your brand refresh checklist aligned.
Your “why” should be explicit before you touch typography, update old branding, or begin asset rebranding. Common drivers include:
- Outdated brand identity: Modernizing visuals and messaging to restore relevance and clarity.
- Structural or strategic shifts: Aligning brand purpose, values, and positioning with a new company direction.
- Market changes: Adapting to evolving consumer expectations, trends, and category dynamics.
- Global expansion: Building a scalable brand roadmap that works across regions and cultures.
- Mergers and acquisitions: Unifying brands through a clear brand rollout checklist and implementation plan.
Most rebrands are driven by more than one factor. Identify the top three and anchor your company rebrand checklist around them. That focus keeps the rebranding exercise disciplined and ensures your brand implementation checklist leads to impact, not confusion. In nearly every situation, there will be multiple reasons for rebranding, so don’t feel obligated to choose a single one; instead, focus on the top three.
Is it the right time for rebranding?
Before building a rebranding roadmap, brands need to pressure-test timing. Even with strong reasons to change, launching too early can undermine results. A critical step in any rebrand process is confirming you have the time, resources, and capital to execute properly from brand name updates to content marketing and search engine optimization.
In some cases, waiting a quarter is the more brilliant move. Clearing existing inventory, aligning partners, and preparing a company rebranding checklist (including a website rebranding checklist and a rebrand launch checklist) ensures the rebranding checklist drives momentum, not disruption. Timing doesn’t just affect launch; it determines whether the rebrand actually sticks.
Establish your rebranding budget and brand implementation roadmap.
As a rebranding agency, an issue we experience with start-ups and brands in desperation is diving headfirst into rebranding without fully considering the costs. A well-defined budget ensures you do not cut corners or run out of fuel to complete the process. A prepared budget creates a roadmap for efficiently allocating resources; with a margin of safety, be prepared for the unknown.
Consider the following factors when creating your rebranding budget.
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Strategy Costs:
The fees for acquiring outside expertise, including consultants and company rebrand checklist specialists.
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Research Costs:
All expenses related to market data and communications with the target market in surveys and panel interviews.
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Design Costs:
This includes expenses for redesigning all visual elements, such as logos, color schemes, and packaging. These costs vary significantly depending on whether you opt for in-house designers or a high-profile design agency.
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Testing Fees:
All brand testing, including design and message testing, to confirm the best strategy to push forward.
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Marketing Expenses:
Effectively launching your rebrand demands a comprehensive marketing strategy, which means budgeting for social media campaigns, PR, and an event or product launch.
06
Legal Fees:
Rebranding often involves new trademarks or revisiting existing contracts, which incur legal costs. These are especially important if you’re making a significant change, like renaming the company.
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Miscellaneous Expenses:
These may include changing signage and business stationery to updating software and digital platforms to reflect the new brand.
Create your rebranding team for asset rebranding.
Delegating the rebranding process to a single individual is a recipe for mediocrity and missed outcomes. Diverse internal and external team members are needed to create the best strategy, refined and optimized for penetrating the target market. Here’s a look at potential candidates for your rebranding effort.
Internal team members.
Brand Manager:
Fully understands the intricacies of the brand and the environments in which the product is presented.
Marketing Director:
Provides valuable insights into distinct brand messaging and competitor’s positioning.
Design Department:
Able to bring ideas to the table on best presenting visuals and messaging into a cohesive look that stands out.
Key Stakeholders:
Can clarify the timeline, budget, and other executive understandings.
External partners for brand implementation checklist.
Branding Agencies:
Experts in strategic messaging and design for peak performance with the target audience.
Legal Advisors:
Ensure the rebrand adheres to intellectual property laws, contracts, and regulatory compliance.
PR Firms:
Manage public image and communication, orchestrating a seamless transition to the new brand identity.
Perform extensive research.
Now that you’ve assembled a team, it’s time to begin the research phase for your brand refresh checklist. This process resembles branding a new company, with the added dimension of factoring in your existing branding’s role in shaping the future direction of the rebranding process. And this is where our research begins.
Brand research.
Nearly every company structure carries some brand equity, some worth carrying over into the checklist for rebranding. The research process includes reviewing all brand collateral, marketing materials, customer conversations, and social listening to understand how consumers fully see and feel the brand and what they believe about it. Brand research also includes surveys or consumer panels created to understand the brand’s current visual identity and voice.
Competitor research.
One of the biggest mistakes a brand makes during its brand rollout checklist is not performing competitor research. Through competitor analysis, you can find gaps permitting distinct brand positioning that can penetrate a particular category. In a competitor audit, you will employ some of the same tactics as brand research, perform retail audits, and acquire existing market research on the competition nearest to your products.
Trend research.
Understanding the most recent trends guides you in deciding what messages to present when putting together your rebrand checklist and how to articulate them in a way that resonates with existing customers and new audiences you hope to target. With trend research, we want to understand how best to integrate one or more into your particular category for maximum impact on purchase intent.
Channel research.
Each sales and marketing channel will have a unique design, layout, and competitive set. Channel research identifies ways to rebrand yourself with distinct visual appeal to target audiences frequenting these platforms or environments. For example, a nutritional supplement company selling in Costco may need to rebrand differently than one in Walgreens. While your branding cannot align with every channel’s best interest, it’s best to consider your most important channel partners in your rebranding strategy.
Choose your form of rebranding.
With a complete understanding of the brand, competitors, and channels, it’s time to decide how intensive the rebranding process will be. In this situation, we have two main options; a third is a misunderstood component of rebranding.
Partial rebrand.
The first choice is the Partial Rebrand, a strategic option that allows preserving certain brand elements while infusing fresh elements to revitalize the overall identity.
Full rebrand.
The second is the Full Rebrand. On this transformative path, every facet of the brand is overhauled, from visual elements to core messaging, crafting an entirely new and invigorated identity that resonates with the target audience.
Rebrand vs. Brand Refresh
When researching the types of rebrands, you may come across the term brand refresh. This term refers to a more subtle approach to redesigning a brand, but it isn’t enough to qualify as a partial rebrand. A brand refresh alone doesn’t change brand positioning or how to approach the target audience.
Perform further research.
Research isn’t a one-and-done aspect of this brand strategy. Consumer research occurs at various points in the rebranding process as new questions present themselves at each point. Continuing to research is how you get the best possible outcome for your rebrand.
Create rebranding strategies.
With all of the preliminary steps behind us, it’s time for the fun part: creating a set of potential rebranding strategies. Once we understand the target audience’s interests and current brand perception, we can let our creative juices flow for copywriting and design.
Brand Messaging
Every rebrand strategy will lead to messaging that articulates the essence of your brand’s evolution. Your messaging strategy brings the brand story to the forefront, narrating the journey from your origins to your present aspirations. The goal is to create a cohesive narrative you articulate through everything from packaging to website design.
Visual Identity
The messaging strategy creates the initial direction for the visual rebrand. Now is the time to flesh out those concepts into distinct brand visuals that convey the emotions you want consumers to feel and understand. Each element must align, from the font to the color choices, to communicate these core brand messages.
Document New Brand Guidelines
Brands must create a visual and content style guide to ensure consistency across the future brand assets they develop. These new brand guidelines will serve the internal team and any agencies you work with, saving significant time in communications and design iterations for outcomes misaligned with the brand theme.
Design your brand assets.
We’ve finally reached the point where you can let the creative juices flow (concerning the style guide) and create each brand asset to create maximum impact.
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Logo design
While it doesn’t have to be the initial design, creating a new logo can make the remaining design process more accessible. This new logo provides traction on the rebrand and direction for the remaining assets.
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Packaging design
The most critical aspect of rebranding for consumer brands is creating a product packaging design that resonates with consumers. Unlike other assets, this is the design they will see each time they shop and, once they acquire a customer, whenever they use the product. It has the greatest potential for influencing initial and repeat purchase decisions.
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website rebranding checklist
Website rebranding is, unfortunately, where things can go astray. Since this asset has multiple layers, it’s easy to let your brand voice and visual representation snowball out of control. And performing damage control will be a much more complicated process than the effort it takes to prevent it in the first place.
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Digital Assets
Maintaining consistency across your digital assets, such as social media profiles, is necessary to create memorability with potential and existing consumers. Every time the target audience sees your presence online, it should reflect what you present on your packaging and website.
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Other Touchpoints
The best brands can create rebranding consistency across all touchpoints, including email signatures, business cards, social media content, and marketing materials such as signage and displays. It’s important to consider all touchpoints as marketing channels, even if they are incremental; they can attract people to your brand or steer them in another direction.
Rebrand launch strategy.
How you go to market with your rebrand is as vital as the rebrand itself. Whether it’s a partial or complete shift in identity, every company should have a rebrand launch checklist that is given a total effort. Here’s a sample list of potential action items for your rebrand launch campaign based on the categories of having a presentation deck, public relations campaign, and marketing channel distribution initiative.
| Presentation | PR | Distribution |
| Pre-Launch Teasers | Press Release Circulation | Social Media Blitz |
| Media Kit Creation | Influencer Partnerships | Email Campaign |
| Webinar Briefing | Customer Testimonials | Retargeting Ads |
| Internal Alignment | Event/Unveiling | SEO Update |
| Launch Day Deck | FAQs and How-tos | Collaborations and Sponsorships |
| Asset Overhaul | Crisis Communication Plan | Metrics Monitoring |
| Logo Unveiling | Media Interviews | Iterative Feedback |
| Style Guide Distribution | Op-Eds in Industry Publications | Affiliate Partnerships |
| Visual Mockups | Social Media AMAs (Ask Me Anything) | Geo-Targeted Ads |
| Employee Training | Podcast Appearances | Press Kit Distribution |
| Customer Onboarding Updates | News Coverage Monitoring | Landing Page Optimization |
| Post-Launch Survey | Employee Advocacy | Update in Online Directories |
| Follow-up Webinars | Post-launch Public Briefing | Physical Store Signage Update |
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Establish reporting metrics.
Establishing reporting metrics is the only way to understand whether it was a successful rebrand or the result of some other brand strategy. Companies of all sizes can leverage free tools such as Google Analytics and Google Trends for reporting. Larger brands with national distribution may need to invest in more robust SaaS solutions.
Here’s a sample of potential metrics your brand will report on.
| KPI Category | KPI Name | Description | Method of Measurement |
| Financial Metrics | Revenue Increase | The growth in sales revenue after the rebrand | % Increase in revenue compared to pre-rebrand period |
| Financial Metrics | Profit Margin | The percentage of revenue that exceeds costs and expenses | Net income / Revenue x 100 |
| Financial Metrics | ROI (Return on Investment) | The effectiveness of the rebranding investment | (Net Profit / Cost of Rebrand) x 100 |
| Sales Metrics | Per Store Sales | The average sales revenue per retail location | Total Sales / Number of Stores |
| Sales Metrics | Average Transaction Value | The average value of each sales transaction | Total Revenue / Number of Transactions |
| Customer Behavior | Repeat Purchases | The number of customers making more than one purchase | Count or % of customers with more than one transaction |
| Customer Behavior | Conversion Rate | Percentage of visitors completing a desired action (e.g., purchasing, signing up, etc.) | (Conversions / Total visitors) x 100 |
| Customer Behavior | Customer Retention Rate | The percentage of customers who continue to buy from you | (Number of returning customers / Total customers) x 100 |
| Customer Behavior | Churn Rate | The percentage of customers who leave your brand for a competitor | (Customers lost / Customers at the start) x 100 |
| Customer Engagement | Net Promoter Score (NPS) | Customer’s willingness to recommend your brand | Survey-based scores ranging from -100 to 100 |
| Operational Metrics | Inventory Turnover | The number of times inventory is sold and replaced | Cost of Goods Sold / Average Inventory Value |
Data-driven brand development that can guarantee sales performance.
If you need a rebrand with performance predictability, we can help. SmashBrand is a brand development agency that researches, designs, and tests all products to ensure peak shelf performance. Book a time to discuss your project with our team.
A seasoned veteran in the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) industry, Jason Vaught brings a wealth of knowledge and hands-on experience as the director of content and marketing for SmashBrand. His comprehensive role at the forefront of brand communication ensures that CPG brands remain well-informed about the suite of services SmashBrand offers. Furthermore, his insights derived from the company's strategy, design, and testing services are invaluable to brand owners and managers seeking expert guidance.
From his early endeavors in launching a successful sports nutrition brand that gained prominence in significant bodybuilding and fitness retail spaces to his entrepreneurial ventures in kick-starting multiple brick-and-mortar and e-commerce startups across diverse industries, Jason's career is studded with substantial milestones. Notably, he has innovated numerous products later embraced by leading industry brands, showcasing his knack for anticipating market demands and setting trends.
Jason's journey in the CPG industry commenced at age 21. Over the years, he has worn multiple hats, ranging from a manufacturer and retailer to a distributor and brand owner. This multifaceted experience equips him with the rare ability to offer practical advice grounded in real-world expertise. His mission is to guide and support other CPG brand owners, directors, and managers on their path to success.
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