How to Announce a Rebrand
To announce a rebrand well, send a short client-first email the day the new site goes live. It should answer three things before it says anything else: what has changed, what stays the same, and what — if anything — the reader needs to do. Support it with one thoughtful LinkedIn post and let the new site do the visual talking. Don't over-explain the design.
Most rebrand announcements are quietly disappointing. Not because the new brand is bad — it usually isn't. But because the announcement is written for the wrong reader.
The founder writes the announcement thinking of themselves and the studio: the process it took, the reasoning behind the decisions, the parts they're proud of. The reader — a client, a lead, a stranger — is thinking about something else entirely: what does this change mean for me?
A useful rebrand announcement answers that second question. Everything else is optional.
Here's how to think about it.
What the announcement is actually for
A rebrand announcement is not a launch celebration. It's a small piece of communication that signals three things to your audience: something has changed, here's what stays the same, and here's what to expect from now on.
Get those three right and the announcement lands. Miss them, and the announcement reads as self-congratulation. Most rebrands miss them.
Write it for the client, not the studio
The single biggest mistake in rebrand announcements is centring the design work itself — the process behind the identity, the reasoning behind the palette, the visual before-and-after. Almost none of that is interesting to the reader.
What the reader wants to know is much simpler:
Are you still doing what I hired you for?
Is the way we interact changing?
Does anything I've bought or booked still apply?
Is my point of contact the same?
A rebrand announcement that opens with reassurance on those questions immediately outperforms one that opens with a manifesto about the new visual identity.
What to include
Three things earn their place in nearly every announcement:
The reason for the change. Not the full story — one honest sentence about what shifted in the business. If the brand redesign was a correction rather than a decoration, that sentence writes itself.
What stays the same. Explicitly. Your team, your services, your commitments, your existing work. This is the reassurance the reader is quietly looking for.
What to do next. A small, specific action — visit the new site, update a bookmark, look out for the new invoice template, whatever's genuinely useful.
Anything else is decoration. Some businesses can afford decoration; small businesses rarely can.
What to leave out
The instinct is to over-share. Resist it. Specifically:
Long descriptions of the visual identity. Show, don't explain.
Studio credits in the body. A single line at the bottom is fine; a paragraph is self-indulgent.
Any variation of "we spent six months refining this." Time spent is not a benefit to the reader.
Screenshots of the old brand with a red X through it. Retire it quietly.
The best rebrand announcements read as though the new brand has already been true for a while. The worst read as though the founder is asking permission.
Where to announce it
Most rebrands need three surfaces, not more:
The website itself. The homepage does most of the announcement's work by simply existing. If the new site is live, the message is already partly delivered.
An email to existing clients and leads. Short, direct, addresses their concerns first. This is the highest-value surface. Don't outsource it to a marketing platform's template.
A single LinkedIn or social post. One post. Not a carousel, not a launch campaign, not a five-day content plan. One thoughtful post.
Anything beyond that is optional and usually diminishing returns.
The moment
The right moment is quieter than most businesses expect. A soft launch — new site live, email out, one post — often outperforms a big announcement campaign. The reason is simple: audiences trust brands that treat their own launches as a low-key confidence signal, and grow suspicious of brands that treat them as a marketing moment.
For the deeper argument on why launch day matters less than most founders think, we've written separately about why great brands are built, not launched.
The test
Read your draft announcement out loud. If it sounds like a client update, it's ready. If it sounds like a press release, cut half of it. If it sounds like a design studio talking about itself, cut the whole first paragraph and start again.
A good rebrand announcement is a small piece of writing that respects the reader's time. That respect gets remembered longer than the visuals.
Frequently asked questions
When should I announce a rebrand? The day the new site goes live. Not before — an announcement without a working site to point to lands as marketing rather than news. Not weeks after — the window between the old brand and the new is when the audience is most likely to notice the change, and delaying spends that attention.
What should a rebrand announcement email include? Three things, in this order: one honest sentence about what shifted in the business, an explicit list of what stays the same (team, services, commitments, existing work), and a small action the reader can take (visit the site, update a bookmark, look out for the new invoice template). Everything else is optional.
What should a rebrand announcement email NOT include? Long descriptions of the design work, studio credits in the body, references to how long the redesign took, and screenshots of the old brand crossed out. All of these read as self-congratulation and drain trust from what should be a client-first update.
What does a sample rebrand announcement email look like? Subject line: A quick note about our new look. Opening line names the change and reassures on continuity: "You'll see a new website and identity from today — same team, same services, sharper way of showing our work." One sentence on the reason: "We've grown into a business that deserves a brand to match." One clear next step: "Take a look, and get in touch if we can help." Signed by the founder.
If you're about to announce a rebrand and want the message to land, we'd be glad to talk it through.