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Announcements · Rebrand

How to announce a rebrand

The rebrand announcement is unusual in that it is itself a specimen of the thing it announces. Readers assess the new identity by looking at the post, which means a vague post is evidence that the rebrand is vague.

Why this announcement is not like the others

The post is a specimen of its own subject

No other announcement here is graded on the same axis as the thing it describes. If a launch post is mediocre the product might still be excellent, and everybody understands that. A rebrand post that reads as generic is direct evidence that the new identity is generic, because the identity is precisely the thing that produces the writing. This has a practical consequence people miss: the announcement is the highest-leverage single artefact of the entire project, and it is usually written last, quickly, by whoever is left. It also means the honest content is unusually specific. What changed, what did not, and why the old one stopped working are three questions with real answers, and reaching for a vision statement instead is the tell that nobody could answer them.

The rule for this one

Say what changed and what did not, in that order, before you say why. The reader's first question is whether anything they depend on has moved.

The same announcement, twice

What the category publishes, and what the rule produces.

The first draft is a composite written to match the register the ranking pages for this query actually publish. It quotes no company and no real post. The second obeys the rule above and nothing else, so anything that changes between them is the rule doing it.

Before

The version everyone posts

Say hello to the new us! After months of hard work we are thrilled to unveil our brand new look. Our refreshed identity reflects who we have become and where we are going. The heart of what we do remains the same, but our new visual identity better represents our values and our vision for the future.

After

The version that obeys the rule

The name, the logo and the colours have changed. The pricing, the team, the roadmap and your login have not. We changed the name because the old one described a product we stopped selling in 2024 and kept confusing people who arrived expecting it. Everything you have saved is where you left it.

What is wrong with the first one

It never says what changed. A reader who cannot tell from the post whether the product, the pricing or only the logo has moved will assume the answer is only the logo, and they will usually be right.

Measured, not asserted

7 of 10 measured dimensions moved.

Both drafts were read by the engine behind our free brand voice generator. It is arithmetic over the text rather than a judgement, which is the reason it is used here: every figure below can be checked by counting the draft printed above it.

The two drafts, measured
DimensionBeforeAfterMoved
Sentences44No
Words5752Yes
Average sentence, in words14.213Yes
Longest sentence, in words2423Yes
Contractions per 100 words00No
Speaks to the readerNoYesYes
First person (we, our, us)102Yes
Second person (you, your)03Yes
Vocabulary richness, out of 1007069Yes
Contains a stock phraseNoNoNo

Read across all fifteen moments the pattern is sharper than any single page: the hub has the corpus numbers.

What earns the post

  • The list of things that are the same. It is longer than the list of changes and it is the part that reassures.
  • The specific failure of the old identity, described as a problem rather than as a stage of growth.
  • What a reader needs to do, which is usually nothing, said explicitly so it is not inferred.

When not to post it at all

Skip the announcement entirely if the change is a typeface refinement. Announcing a small visual update invites the audience to grade it, and they will grade it against the expectation that the word rebrand set.

Other moments

A different thing to announce

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