rebrand

verb

re·​brand (ˌ)rē-ˈbrand 

rebranded; rebranding; rebrands

transitive verb

: to change or update the brand or branding of (a product, service, etc.)

After the original app Picaboo failed to gain traction in 2011, they rebranded the app as Snapchat and added the captioning feature.

—Madeline Purdue

Rebranding a company with a troubled history, or renaming a product with unfortunate associations, is often a necessary act of self-protection.

—Jeffrey Goldberg

broadly : to publicly refer to or describe (someone or something) in a new or different way

After France declined to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, George W. Bush supporters … tried to rebrand French fries as "freedom fries."

—Eve Peyser

… recommended last month that it was time to "rebrand" Britain as "one of the world's pioneers rather than one of its museums."

—Warren Hoge

rebranding noun

plural rebrandings

The emergence of the Tea Party, Boehner says, forced upon Republicans, in one cycle, a rebranding that otherwise might have taken the Party a generation to achieve.

—Peter J. Boyer

Examples of rebrand in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The emergency motion will allow the owner/operator of 16 regional sports networks rebrand its in-market TV hubs before the 2024-25 NBA season officially tips off on Tuesday. —Anthony Crupi, Sportico.com, 18 Oct. 2024

Forbes senior contributor Edward Segal writes this is yet another big hit for a company that has been trying to rebrand itself as people’s relationship with weight, health and weight loss drugs are in significant flux. —Megan Poinski, Forbes, 30 Sep. 2024

Consider how Yeti was able to rebrand using community marketing to become a more inclusive company. —Tony Ambroza, Forbes, 2 Oct. 2024

Some clinicians and patients have called to rebrand BPD as complex PTSD, arguing that the overlap between these two conditions is significant enough to eliminate the former diagnosis. —Diana Kwon, Scientific American, 1 Jan. 2022

Word History

First Known Use

1895, in the meaning defined above