Creed: Rebranding RockyLegacy is more than a name.

Creed, the blockbuster spinoff and reboot of the Rocky franchise, shows how to rebrand, restore and resurrect moribund personal and organizational brands.

The seven Rocky films teach lessons about leadership, branding and finding your mission. Boxing serves as a metaphor for the fight against life’s challenges.

Branding and boxing. The brands in boxing literally center around a lone boxer in the ring. Just as a true brand has a life, identity and story of its own, a true champion or great contender has a life’s story and identity that draw fans.

Weak brands quickly dismissed. In the marketplace, weak brands become one dimensional, interchangeable commodities and are quickly dismissed just like Rocky’s least popular adversaries, Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago, Tommy Gunn, George Washington Duke and Mason Dixon.

Strong brands create enduring legacies. Both Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed were powerful personal brands and heroes who created great legacies and cast large shadows. “Fighting shadows’’ of greater champions is a recurring theme we see in 1990’s Rocky V, 2006’s Rocky Balboa and the new Creed film.