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

By the early 1980s the chain’s core audience was grown up and the chain sought to rebrand itself for adults. —Fielding Buck, Oc Register, 16 Feb. 2026

Partnering with billionaires Ken Griffin and Stephen Ross, Simas is shepherding a high-stakes campaign to rebrand the Sunshine State, on behalf of top leaders from more than 200 companies across the state. —Nick Lichtenberg, Fortune, 15 Feb. 2026

As Tesla loses global market share, Musk has been trying to diversify Tesla away from its EV roots and rebrand it as more of an AI, robotics and robotaxi company. —Los Angeles Times, 6 Feb. 2026

Trump’s handpicked board members then voted to rebrand the center to include his name. —E. Andrew Taylor, The Conversation, 4 Feb. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1895, in the meaning defined above