Repositoning with influencers

For you if: A product or brand about to change its name, Creators still linking, tagging & talking about the old one, Deciding if the rename itself should be the campaign.

Dennis Ksendzov

Founder · October 1, 2026 · 10 min read

For you if:

A product or brand about to change its name
Creators still linking, tagging & talking about the old one
Deciding if the rename itself should be the campaign

Outgrew the old name

Athletic Greens became AG1 so the name could hold more than one product

AG1's CEO Kat Cole said the brand needed a naming convention that could hold future innovation instead of Athletic Greens. athletechnews.com
AG1 took greens out of its name while it still sold only one product. athletechnews.com
Dropping the Athletic Greens name also set AG1 apart from the copycat greens powders that entered the market after 2010. athletechnews.com
AG1 became a hit on social media and leaned into partnerships with Joe Rogan and Dr. Andrew Huberman, who both praised it on their podcasts. athletechnews.com
Athletic Greens worked with hundreds of podcasters at any given moment and was the third-largest podcast advertiser by total show count, behind BetterHelp and Manscaped. marketingbrew.com
Athletic Greens sponsored podcasts hosted by Dax Shepard and Monica Padman on Armchair Expert and by Tim Ferriss, who pitch AG1 to their listeners. marketingbrew.com
Andrew Huberman, host of the podcast Huberman Lab, had been promoting Athletic Greens for about two years and had joined the company as a medical advisor. marketingbrew.com
Athletic Greens tracked its podcast creators through vanity URLs equipped with UTM parameters to track the digital events of individual shows, such as visits to the website and conversions. marketingbrew.com

Our own records: how AG1's creators moved to the new link

In October to December 2022, 67 of the 69 AG1 YouTube placements we hold still linked to athleticgreens.com.
In January to March 2023, 89 of the 90 AG1 YouTube placements we hold still linked to athleticgreens.com.
In April to June 2023, 114 placements used the old link and 51 used drinkag1.com.
By July to September 2023, 153 of 161 linked to drinkag1.com.
By October to December 2023, 132 of 148 linked to drinkag1.com.

Hotel Engine became Engine and had 10 creators introduce the new name

In October 2024, Hotel Engine renamed itself Engine and added flights and car rentals to its hotel booking. finance.yahoo.com
Engine worked with 10 creators across corporate, travel and lifestyle content to promote its rebrand. theshelf.com
Engine's rebrand campaign with creators earned 510,742 total impressions, 2.3 times the projected reach. theshelf.com
Meta ads made from the creators' content got Engine 11.7M impressions and 773 signups at $51.75 each. theshelf.com
Each of Engine's 10 creators focused on one key Engine benefit: Flex insurance, group travel, points programs or one-click booking. theshelf.com
Engine's creators posted Instagram Reels, Instagram Stories, Instagram Carousels, LinkedIn Videos and TikTok Videos. theshelf.com
Content from creators fentifriedchicken and shannonfiedler13 got high engagement rates by turning corporate pain points into funny content, and thefinancebrides scored the highest engagement rate at 3.24% with a TikTok about wedding group travel and budget savings. theshelf.com
Roxy Couse's Instagram Reel and Stories for Engine were Webby-nominated for Best B2B Social Campaign and named a key brand tone driver. theshelf.com
Engine announced its rebrand and platform expansion on October 9, 2024. engine.com

Mother Beverage relaunched as Poppi and started calling itself a prebiotic soda

Mother Beverage took a $400,000 deal on Shark Tank, then renamed itself Poppi because it could not trademark the name Mother. bevnet.com
Poppi changed its product from being called an apple cider vinegar beverage to being called a prebiotic soda. bevnet.com
Stephen Ellsworth said he saw the rebrand widening the brand's buyers, possibly to a younger audience. bevnet.com
Poppi's team started making new content for its social media channels, which Allison Ellsworth said had been less of a focus under the Mother name. bevnet.com
The relaunch was set to put Poppi in nearly 1,000 stores by the end of the first quarter, including Sprouts, Life Time and 50 Wegmans. bevnet.com
Poppi's national launch landed on March 3, 2020, the first week of Covid lockdowns. entrepreneur.com
Instead of freezing during the pandemic, Ellsworth went all in on TikTok and a digital-first approach from day one. entrepreneur.com
Ellsworth said one TikTok video she posted went viral, and she now has more than three billion views on her face, with one third of the platform having seen her face over seven times. entrepreneur.com
The company rebranded to Poppi in 2020, swapping its glass bottles for colorful cans, and grew to $500 million in annual revenue by 2025. entrepreneur.com

Theragun became Therabody and launched new products under it at the same time

Theragun announced on May 4, 2020 that it was rebranding to Therabody. prnewswire.com
Therabody launched a CBD product line called TheraOne and new 4th generation Theragun massage devices at the same time as its rebrand. prnewswire.com
On September 17, 2020, Therabody, formerly known as Theragun, added professional football player DeAndre Hopkins as an investor and athlete brand ambassador. prnewswire.com
Therabody's partnership with DeAndre Hopkins was announced through a 60-second spot titled How Do You See You, produced by Therabody's newly launched creative division, Therabody Media. prnewswire.com
Therabody's other athlete ambassadors included professional basketball player Paul George, professional golfer Collin Morikawa, tennis player Amanda Anisimova, triathlete Lucy Charles-Barclay and Paralympic champion Jessica Long. prnewswire.com
On Instagram, Julianne Hough announced becoming a Therabody ambassador and used the hashtags Therabody and TherabodyAmbassador in her post. athletechnews.com

The rename was the campaign

Kim Kardashian changed Kimono to Skims in 2019, after the backlash and before it launched

Kim Kardashian faced social media backlash over the Kimono name after the mayor of Kyoto asked her to drop the trademark. wwd.com
Kim Kardashian renamed her shapewear brand from Kimono to Skims and set a launch date of Sept. 10. wwd.com
Kim Kardashian said on Instagram that fans inspired the new brand name Skims by sharing their ideas with her. wwd.com
Skims launched with bras, underwear, bodysuits and a one-leg bike short available in nine shades and sizes ranging from XXS to 4XL. wwd.com
Kardashian first revealed the Kimono name on June 25. wwd.com
Khloe Kardashian appeared in an Instagram video wearing the Skims sculpting bodysuit. wwd.com
The Skims launch campaign featured emotional testimonials from high profile celebrities including her sisters, and a cameo from Alice Marie Johnson, the former inmate released from prison in 2018. wwd.com
The Skims launch nearly sold out within the first hour and Kardashian was said to have made 2 million dollars in minutes, and the site crashed from demand before it even went live. wwd.com
Kardashian used her own Instagram story throughout launch day to tell fans about restocks as items sold out. wwd.com

Every post we could find on the Skims launch shows Kim Kardashian and her sisters, no creator or celebrity outside the family.

IHOP teased a new name, IHOb, in 2018 to launch its burgers

IHOP teased that it was changing its name to IHOb and the move created a lot of buzz on social media. cnbc.com
IHOP used the IHOb name change to promote its new line of burgers designed to lure in customers at lunchtime. cnbc.com
IHOP's name change campaign produced 1.2 million tweets in the first 10 days. cnbc.com
IHOP's chief marketing officer said the company sold four times more burgers after the IHOb campaign. cnbc.com
At its peak, IHOP was selling 500,000 burgers a week after the IHOb campaign. cnbc.com
IHOP's president said the idea came from its own team working with its ad agency Droga5. fsrmagazine.com
IHOP switched its verified Twitter handle from at IHOP to at IHOb and bought the domain ihob.com as part of the tease. prnewsonline.com
IHOP's social media team posted prompts asking what the b could be, and 30,000 Twitter users responded with their guesses. prnewsonline.com
IHOP said its burger reveal produced over 3,000 articles and 8 billion impressions in a week, and put it in the No 1, No 2 and No 4 trending spots on Twitter at once. fsrmagazine.com

Every tweet and article we found on the IHOb tease came only from IHOP's own account, no creator or celebrity anywhere.

Dunkin' Donuts dropped Donuts from its name, and more people talked about it

Dunkin' Donuts announced in September 2018 that it would officially rename itself Dunkin'. news.dunkindonuts.com
Dunkin' said the new name was one more step toward becoming a beverage-led, on-the-go brand, on packaging, ads and restaurants from January 2019. news.dunkindonuts.com
After the Dunkin' name change, Dunkin's Buzz score among the public climbed from 12 to 21. qsrmagazine.com
YouGov found that 23 percent of consumers recalled discussing Dunkin' with friends or family after the name change, up from 15 percent before it. qsrmagazine.com
Dunkin's new branding was developed with three creative and branding agencies, Jones Knowles Ritchie, BBDO New York and Arc Worldwide. news.dunkindonuts.com
Dunkin' announced the rename on September 25, 2018. news.dunkindonuts.com
The Dunkin' name officially took effect in January 2019, four months after the announcement. news.dunkindonuts.com

Every article we could find on the Dunkin' rename traces to the company's own newsroom, with no creator or celebrity in it.

What the rename cost them

Weight Watchers became WW in 2018, and by early 2019 the new name had left people confused

Weight Watchers renamed itself WW in 2018 and said it wanted people to focus on being well instead of dieting. cnbc.com
WW added influencers such as DJ Khaled after Oprah Winfrey joined the company, which helped give WW a resurgence. cnbc.com
CNBC wrote that the rebranding campaign left people confused and Weight Watchers' member numbers falling. cnbc.com
Weight Watchers forecast a 10 percent drop in members in the first quarter, the most important season for diets. cnbc.com
Weight Watchers shares fell by roughly 35 percent in one day. cnbc.com
CEO Mindy Grossman said the campaign needed to be more about weight loss in January, with a more obvious bridge from Weight Watchers to WW. cnbc.com
DJ Khaled joined Oprah Winfrey, who owns 10 percent of Weight Watchers, as another high profile endorser of the service. fortune.com
DJ Khaled was asked to chronicle his own weight loss on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter to promote the Weight Watchers Freestyle program and attract more men and a younger generation of customers. fortune.com
Weight Watchers investor Oprah Winfrey lost more than 39 million dollars in one day when WW shares fell, and her team said she would still play a central role in the brand's spring marketing campaign in the US, Canada and Australia. foxbusiness.com
WW's member count fell from 4.5 million in the second quarter to 3.2 million in the fourth quarter. foxbusiness.com

Gatorade became G in 2009 without telling anyone outside the company why

Gatorade ran a What is G campaign with famous athletes before the company revealed it was renaming itself G. cspdailynews.com
Gatorade's executives had not shared the plan behind the new G naming with anyone outside the company, so the reasons for the change were a mystery. cspdailynews.com
The report said shoppers choosing cheaper drinks hurt Gatorade, and the start of its rebrand under the G name at least at first came off as poorly executed. cspdailynews.com
Gatorade was still around a $5 billion brand but suffered a 15.5% drop in sales. cspdailynews.com
Gatorade's G rebrand opened with TV spots asking What is G and showing iconic athletes such as Muhammad Ali before the company revealed the new name. cspdailynews.com
Gatorade's sales fell 15.5 percent during its G rebrand year, and its market share fell to about 75 percent, the first time its share had ever dropped. cspdailynews.com
Gatorade's chief marketing officer Sarah Robb O'Hagan said about 50 percent of the volume Gatorade lost in 2009 left the light refreshing beverage segment entirely, going to tap water and soft drinks rather than competing sports drinks. cspdailynews.com

KKW Beauty relaunched as SKKN by Kim, was sued over the name, and closed in 2025

Kim Kardashian launched KKW Beauty in 2017, then shut it down in 2022 to relaunch with a new brand and new formulas. beautymatter.com
Coty helped Kim Kardashian launch SKKN by Kim in 2022 as a nine-step skincare system. beautymatter.com
Kim Kardashian faced a lawsuit claiming her new SKKN skincare line confused customers with a small Brooklyn beauty business. monstersandcritics.com
SKKN by Kim closed down in June 2025 as part of a plan to fold into the Skims brand. beautymatter.com
Kim Kardashian released SKKN on June 21 after teasing the products for a month. monstersandcritics.com
A trademark infringement lawsuit against Kim Kardashian's SKKN by Kim brand was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice, reported February 24, 2023. thefashionlaw.com
A source told WWD that Kim Kardashian, who has 357 million Instagram followers, did not get enough marketing support from Coty, and that SKKN by Kim was under resourced during its time with Coty. wwd.com
Kim Kardashian's SKKN by Kim brand had its creator count contract 4 percent year over year, a director at Creator IQ said, even as Skims worked at roughly 18 times the creators and 13 times the posts. wwd.com
SKKN by Kim is rumored to have around 20 million dollars in sales and never scaled into retail, while Skims reached a 4 billion dollar valuation in 2023. wwd.com