What's included
The clearance bar runs underneath the design work for a reason, and the tail after reveal day is longer than most plans admit:
- Strategy, positioning & naming, Brand audit and equity research, the positioning and narrative platform, name generation and shortlisting, and linguistic and cultural screening before anyone gets attached. Milestone: name shortlist agreed for clearance.
- Trademark clearance & registration, The long lead. Knockout searches, full clearance in the priority markets, a risk opinion from counsel, quietly securing domains and handles, filing by class and market, then monitoring examination and opposition. Milestone: name cleared and applications filed.
- Identity design & approval, Design territories, the logo and wordmark, colour, type and motion, accessibility and legibility checks, and the approval that everything downstream fans out from. Milestone: identity approved and locked.
- Asset production & system build, Guidelines and the asset library first, then parallel production: website rebuild, product interface theming, email and transactional templates, packaging artwork, signage and livery. Milestone: core assets production complete.
- Switchover readiness & rehearsal, The checklist of every surface, the legal entity and invoicing review, third-party listings and marketplaces, redirects and analytics continuity, and a rehearsal in staging before the go decision. Milestone: switchover rehearsed and go decision made.
- Reveal day & the long tail, The simultaneous switch, the announcement, handle migration, then the part plans forget: signage installation across sites, packaging changeover as old stock depletes, partner surfaces, and a takedown audit of the old brand. Milestone: long tail closed and old brand retired.
Who uses this template
Brand and marketing leaders, agency teams, and in-house creative directors use a relaunch plan when refreshing an identity or repositioning a company. It coordinates naming and trademark clearance, identity approval, and asset production toward a single simultaneous reveal, then tracks the long tail of updating physical surfaces like signage, packaging, and vehicles.
How to customize it
- Add a clearance row per market and per trademark class; the durations and the risk differ, and a single bar hides which market is the problem.
- If you are refreshing rather than renaming, delete the naming and clearance phases and start at identity design, the plan gets months shorter.
- Expand the asset production phase into one row per surface once the inventory exists; the count is always higher than the first estimate.
- Add rows for regulated or contractual surfaces, product labelling, certificates, licences, filings, which have their own approval routes.
- Set the reveal date only after the rehearsal row, and keep the announcement rows tied to it rather than to a calendar month.
- Lengthen the packaging changeover bar to match your actual stock cover; it is usually the longest tail item and the most visible.
Scheduling tips
- Clear the name before you fall in love with it. The cheapest moment to lose a name is during knockout searches; the most expensive is after the packaging has been printed.
- Inventory every surface that carries the brand. Invoices, contracts, email signatures, job listings, app store entries and receptionist scripts all count, and none of them are in the creative brief.
- Rehearse the switch. A staging run finds the hard-coded logo, the cached favicon and the third-party template nobody owned.
- Protect search equity. Redirect mapping and analytics continuity are the difference between a relaunch and starting from zero on organic traffic.
- Track the tail as a list, not a phase. Signage, packaging and partner surfaces switch over weeks or months, and unowned tail items are what people still notice a year later.
Related templates
- Website Redesign Project Plan Template
- Free Product Launch Gantt Chart Template
- Marketing Plan Gantt Chart Template
- Post-Merger Integration Plan Template
- Retail Store Opening Timeline Template
- Browse all Gantt chart templates
Frequently asked questions
How long does a brand relaunch take?
The template runs about sixteen months for a full rename including trademark clearance and registration. A visual refresh with no name change is commonly four to eight months, because the clearance phase disappears and identity design can start immediately.
Why is trademark clearance the long pole?
Because it gates the name and it cannot be compressed by adding people. Knockout searches are fast, but full clearance across several markets and classes takes weeks, counsel needs time to form a risk opinion, and after filing there are examination and opposition periods you do not control. Design work that runs ahead of the risk opinion is work you may have to throw away.
Do we have to switch everything on the same day?
Everything you control, yes, website, product interface, social handles, email templates, signatures, sales collateral and the announcement. A partial switch on the surfaces you own looks like an error rather than a decision. Physical and third-party surfaces are the exception because they genuinely cannot switch instantly, which is why the template gives them a tracked tail rather than pretending they land on the day.
What is usually forgotten in a brand relaunch?
The unglamorous surfaces: invoice and contract templates, the legal entity name where it differs from the trading name, app store and marketplace listings, review site profiles, partner directories, job boards, email signatures, vehicle livery and anything printed that sits in a stockroom. The template makes the switchover checklist its own row because building that inventory is a real piece of work.
How do we avoid losing search traffic?
Treat redirect mapping, canonical tags and analytics continuity as launch-blocking tasks rather than post-launch cleanup, and keep the old domain redirecting rather than dropping it. If the site structure is changing at the same time, plan it with the website redesign project plan so the URL work is not squeezed into reveal week.
Is the brand relaunch template free?
Yes. Free Excel, PowerPoint and CSV downloads, and free online editing with no account and no watermark.