Rebrand Rollout Checklist Template
Three documents and three sheets that generate the surface list from a crawl and a catalogue, so a workshop's list stops being the inventory.
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Residual Audit · Cadence Logistics · 184 findings across a year of scans
40% of every residual this rollout ever found showed up after day 90
| Scan day | Surface | Old brand element | Cadence | Why it survived |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | status.halloranfreight.com | Old domain | Continuous | Subdomain nobody owned, vendor-hosted |
| 90 | Invoice PDF template | Old wordmark | Quarterly | Cached in the billing vendor's render service |
| 365 | Trade show booth graphics | Old wordmark | Annual or slower | Crated since the last show, unpacked on site |
What the pattern says
| Regeneration cadence | Residuals found | Median days live |
|---|---|---|
| Continuous | 34 | 18 |
| Quarterly | 55 | 97 |
| Annual or slower | 55 | 371 |
Every continuous surface that survived was found inside 30 days. Every surface still carrying the old brand at day 365 regenerates annually or slower. A single day-30 scan would have declared this rollout clean and been wrong about the half of it that had not rendered yet.
Every rebrand rollout checklist online is the same static list: update the website, the email templates, the social profiles, the signage. It assumes the person filling it in already knows every surface the old brand touches, which is exactly the assumption a kickoff workshop cannot support. On the worked example the workshop named 214 surfaces. The SSO application catalogue alone named 512, more than double, because it enumerates what exists rather than what a room happens to remember.
Two mechanisms carry the rest. The inventory generates from a crawl, an application catalogue and an asset library rather than a memory exercise, so scope is bounded by what exists. Then a residual scan keeps running after launch, because a surface that regenerates quarterly or slower can carry the old brand for months before anything triggers it to render again. Google's own guidance on site moves says to keep old-domain redirects in place for at least a year, the same logic applied here to every slow-regenerating surface, not just the domain.
At Cadence Logistics, a fictional freight carrier formed from a merger, four generated sources surface 1,284 distinct surfaces against a workshop list of 214. Migration Tracker ships 1,041 by launch and defers 243, with an owner and a date on all but nineteen. The scan that follows finds 184 residuals over the next year, 40 per cent of them after day 90, every one on a slow-regenerating surface. Pair it with the asset library taxonomy pack for the rights side of the same library, and the redirect map the domain batch hands off to.
What you get
Rollout Plan
Seven workstreams sequenced by technical dependency rather than department, with a documented reason for what closes before what and what can run in parallel.
Comms Sequence
The order internal, customer-facing and external announcements go out in, gated on Migration Tracker's actual batch completion instead of a calendar date.
Legacy Handling Note
How to deplete printed stock instead of destroying it, keep old-domain redirects live for search engines, and let contract paper migrate at its own renewal.
Surface Inventory
Every surface from a crawl, an application catalogue, an asset library and a physical inventory, tagged with its regeneration cadence and whether the workshop ever named it.
Migration Tracker
The inventory batched into seven workstreams with an owner and a due date on every deferral, and a flag on any batch where one of those is missing.
Residual Audit
One dated row per post-launch finding across an expanding scan schedule, so a surface that regenerates once a year gets a real chance to be checked.
How it works
- 1
Send your sources
A site crawl, an SSO or application catalogue export, the asset library, any print inventory, and the workshop's own surface list if one already exists.
- 2
River generates the inventory
Every surface from every source lands in one sheet, tagged with its regeneration cadence, so the workshop's list stops being treated as the ceiling.
- 3
The rollout batches by dependency
Seven workstreams sequence against each other, each deferral carries an owner and a date, and the comms sequence gates external announcement on real batch completion.
- 4
The scan keeps running
After launch, an expanding schedule re-checks customer-facing surfaces, catching the slow-regenerating ones that would otherwise carry the old brand for months unnoticed.
Frequently asked questions
Is it free, and what format are the downloaded files?
Free to download with no account required. The documents are .docx and every sheet is a .csv, so the inventory, the tracker and the audit all open directly in whatever office suite or spreadsheet tool the team already uses.
What does Edit with AI actually do?
It turns this pack into a private Space and River works through your own sources inside it: generating the Surface Inventory, batching Migration Tracker by dependency, and running the Residual Audit scan on schedule after launch. Everything shown here is the worked example; yours replaces it.
We already ran a rebrand kickoff workshop. Is this still useful?
Yes, and the workshop list becomes an input rather than the inventory. On the worked example the workshop named 214 surfaces and the generated sources found 1,284, with only 92 appearing in both. The workshop is not wrong, it is simply bounded by who was in the room.
How long should we keep redirecting the old domain?
Google's own site-move guidance recommends keeping a redirect in place for at least a year, giving search engines time to transfer ranking signals across. This pack's Legacy Handling Note applies that same logic to every slow-regenerating surface the rollout touches, not only the domain.
When does the residual scan actually stop?
When a full scan cycle has passed for every regeneration cadence in the inventory and comes back clean, not on a fixed calendar date. An annual-or-slower surface needs roughly a year of runway before a clean scan actually means something.
Can this handle a rebrand that isn't from a merger?
Yes. The mechanism is the same for a standalone rename, a visual refresh, or a spinout: generate the surface inventory from real sources, batch the migration by dependency, then keep scanning after launch regardless of what triggered the change. If a technical SEO audit already crawled the site recently, that crawl is one of the four inventory sources rather than a separate pass.
Find out what a workshop's rollout list is actually missing
Send your crawl, your app catalogue and your asset library. River generates the real surface inventory, batches the migration by dependency, and keeps scanning after launch.
Edit with AI