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

Even when law enforcement arrests their leaders or seizes their online infrastructure, the remaining members will rebrand and keep working. —Sam Sabin, Axios, 7 Feb. 2025

Norsworthy said the company will eventually rebrand all of its restaurants with the Five Four look and name. —Jenna Thompson, Kansas City Star, 22 Jan. 2025

But the rebel leader has sought to rebrand his and his group’s position, while distancing himself from their Al Qaeda connections. —Freddie Clayton, NBC News, 9 Dec. 2024

The report, which will be delivered to congressional offices Thursday and was shared first with The Hill, comes as Kennedy seeks to rebrand himself as an advocate for transparency about vaccines, rather than a vaccine skeptic who openly questions their safety. —Nathaniel Weixel, The Hill, 15 Jan. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1895, in the meaning defined above