How long does a rebrand take? As long as its slowest yes.

In August 2000, an arbitration ruling told Andersen Consulting it had to stop using its own name. By the account of Anthony Shore, the Landor namer who led the project, writing in Fortune in 2025, the firm had 65,000 people in 47 countries. On 1 January 2001, according to the company’s own filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, it began doing business as Accenture. Name, identity and launch, in under five months.

So how long does a rebrand take? The design work for a new identity usually takes a few months, and most agency guides quote three to six months for a full rebrand. The whole change takes as long as its slowest approval and its biggest estate. A new name adds a legal clock you do not control, and the rollout lasts as long as it takes to replace every place the old brand lives.

Accenture was fast for a reason that has nothing to do with drawing. A tribunal had already settled the hardest question for it: whether to change at all, and by when. Our view, from the rebrands we have worked on, is that the calendar is set less by how quickly an agency can design than by how quickly a company can agree.

Into four stages, and the design is usually the shortest of them. Each one has a different thing setting its pace, and only some of those are in your hands.

The first and last rows are where most of the months hide. In our experience, a delay that looks like a design delay usually started in the strategy row, when a question everyone thought was closed turns out to be open.

Because a name has to clear the law, and the law runs on its own clock in every market you trade in. The United States Patent and Trademark Office reported that in fiscal 2025 the average trademark application took 11.7 months from filing to registration or abandonment, with a first examiner action after 5.6 months. That was a good year: the office says it cut first action pendency by a quarter. The three registries our clients deal with most run at very different speeds, and a company trading in all of them waits for the slowest.

India is where the clock bites hardest, and it is where most of the companies we work with trade. The Registry’s own annual report for 2024-25 records 552,190 trademark applications filed and 156,403 examined, and says that discontinuing contract examiners led to lower examination output. Obhan Mason, a Delhi intellectual property firm, wrote in July 2025 that the wait for a first examination report had stretched from two or three months to eight to ten. The one lever that reliably works is paying for expedited processing under Rule 34 of the Trade Marks Rules, which says an expedited application should be examined ordinarily within three months.

Clearance is also where most names die, which is why it belongs at the start rather than the end. Shore’s account of the Accenture project is a useful measure of the attrition. Around 550 names were submitted. Only 51 cleared legal screening. The one that survived was then checked in 65 languages, with three native speakers for each, to make sure it meant nothing unfortunate anywhere the firm worked.

If your rebrand keeps its name, you skip most of this stage. If it does not, plan the legal work first and the launch date second, and file in every market on the day the name is chosen, because the Registry’s months only start when you do.

Because the old brand lives on things you already own, and replacing them all at once is the most expensive way to do it. The launch is a day. The rollout is a schedule.

Dunkin’ shows the patient version. Northeastern University’s news service reported in August 2017 that the chain was testing the name without “Donuts” at several locations, starting in Pasadena, California. The change was announced on 25 September 2018 and took effect from January 2019. According to the company’s release, reported by TODAY, the new branding would go on “all new and remodeled stores in the U.S. and, eventually, internationally”, across a system of about 12,600 restaurants worldwide. Nobody tore down a sign that was due to come down anyway.

Even one of the most watched renames of recent years had parts moving on someone else’s timetable. Facebook announced its new company name, Meta, on 28 October 2021. Its shares only began trading under the ticker META on 9 June 2022, per the company’s investor release and Nasdaq, more than seven months later. The rollout of a rebrand is not one event. It is a long list of owners, each with its own calendar.

Faster than most people expect, when the question is already closed before the work begins.

Myntra is the clearest recent example. In December 2020, Naaz Patel of the Avesta Foundation filed a complaint with the Mumbai Police Cyber Crime department calling the fashion platform’s logo offensive to women. As Business Today and The News Minute both reported on 30 January 2021, company officials told the police they would change the logo within a month, on the website, the app and the packaging, and had already issued printing orders for packaging with the new mark.

Myntra and Accenture had one thing most rebrands lack. Nobody inside either company could argue about whether to change, or when. The speed was not a design achievement. It was an agreement that had been made for them. Most companies have to make that agreement themselves, which is exactly the part that takes the time.

Reopening questions that were supposed to be settled. Everything else is a variation on that. These are the patterns we see most, and they are our observations rather than a study’s findings.

The strategy gets re-argued in the design review. The people approving the logo were not in the room when the positioning was agreed, so they judge the mark against a brief they never accepted. The fix is to put the approvers in the strategy stage, not just the reveal.

Approvers arrive late. A new stakeholder at round three is a new round one.

Agencies are guilty of the next one. Showing a client six routes feels generous, and it turns a judgement into a vote. Two or three routes, each built from the agreed strategy, are faster to choose between and easier to defend.

Rollout is treated as a launch-day event. Teams try to change every surface at once, run out of budget and patience halfway, and live with two brands for years. Dunkin’ planned the handover to follow its remodelling cycle instead.

So when someone asks how long your rebrand will take, the better answer is three questions back. How many people have to say yes? Does the name change? How many things carry the old mark? Answer those honestly and you will know the calendar before anyone opens a design file. The drawing is the part everyone pictures. The agreeing is the part that fills the months, and it is the one part you can start on today.

How long does a rebrand take?

The identity design usually takes a few months, and most agency guides quote three to six months for a full rebrand. The complete change takes longer: a new name adds trademark clearance, and the rollout runs as long as it takes to replace every place the old brand appears. The real variable is how quickly the company can agree, not how quickly anyone can design.

How long does it take to trademark a new company name?

It depends on the registry. In the US, the USPTO reported average total pendency of 11.7 months in fiscal 2025. The UK Intellectual Property Office says a clean, unopposed application takes around three to four months. In the UAE the law gives the Ministry of Economy and Tourism 90 days to decide, and firms practising there put a clean registration at three to six months. In India the Trade Marks Act expects registration within 18 months, practitioners report 18 to 24 months, and some straightforward applications now take two to three years; paying for expedited examination is the one reliable way to shorten the front end. Screen names legally before anyone gets attached to one, because clearance is where most candidates fail.

Can a company rebrand in a few months?

Yes, when the hard questions are already answered. Andersen Consulting became Accenture in under five months in 2000 because an arbitration ruling set the deadline, and Myntra changed its logo across its website, app and packaging within about a month in 2021 after a police complaint. Speed comes from agreement, not from faster design.

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