About Rebel.Rebel
One House. Two obligations.
Challenge the claim. Own the answer.
The name
REBEL — verb. Challenge the claim.
REBEL — noun. Own the answer.
Research without editorial becomes observation. Editorial without research becomes opinion.
The practice
Rebel.Rebel is an independent research and editorial practice for the retrieval age.
We measure what machines say when a consequential decision is on the table, find where the record breaks, and repair it without moving the ruler.
The two obligations are one practice because each is what makes the other worth trusting, and neither requires you to buy the other. The prescription does not come from software recommending what software can count. It comes from an instrument designed by people who write for a living and built from fieldwork with the people who actually decide, read by people who know what a sentence is doing, which is why it names whose reason won and not how many times a name appeared. Most baselines end there, with a prescription you can act on yourself. When a position is commissioned, from this house or elsewhere, it should not come from taste: it should be dug out of the gaps the instrument found, in named and dated facts, and it should go back under the instrument when the work is done. A position that survives its own measurement is worth more than one that was never at risk.
That is what surgical means here: a named failure, a named repair, no larger than the gap, measured again. Brand work has been unmeasurable for as long as there has been brand work. This is the arrangement that ends that, whoever does the writing.
The fence between them is not a courtesy. The instrument is priced apart, invoiced apart, and never for sale. A baseline can conclude that nothing is wrong, and the prescription it issues is as valid in your agency’s hands as in ours. The referee is never for sale. The advocate is.
The House also makes and owns books, tools and other cultural property built to the same standard.
Not another campaign brief. The record first.
Founder
Companies spend enormous effort deciding what they mean, while the sentence that reaches the customer may be assembled elsewhere.
Austin Ripmaster is the founder of Rebel.Rebel. He has held senior brand and creative roles at Nike, adidas and Lucchese, including six years in-house at Lucchese, a bootmaker founded in 1883.
The Assay was built to measure that gap.
House doctrine
Make things that stay.
Important things deserve an accurate record before a consequential decision is made about them.
The architecture
The Assay™
The instrument.
Editorial
The authorship arm. Evidence into record. Record into circulation.
Standing Wave™
The longitudinal program.
Touchstone™
The independent public research program.
Rebel.Rebel Press
The publishing imprint.
Retrieval + Fidelity
The two headline measurements.
The standards that govern the work
The Practice
Six phases, with quarterly ledgers.
Four laws, eight gates, twenty maxims. Read the standard →
Questions about the practice
Who runs Rebel.Rebel?
Austin Ripmaster is the founder. He has held senior brand and creative roles at Nike, adidas and Lucchese, including six years in-house at Lucchese, a bootmaker founded in 1883. The practice is a company in Wolcott, Colorado; the founder works from Portland, Oregon.
What does the name mean?
REBEL, verb: challenge the claim. REBEL, noun: own the answer. Research without editorial becomes observation. Editorial without research becomes opinion. The House does both, which is the reason the name is doubled.
You measure and you also write. Is that a conflict?
It would be, unmanaged. A client can buy the Baseline and the Standing Wave™ indefinitely without commissioning a word of editorial. The referee is never for sale. The advocate is. Measurement and authorship are invoiced separately, always.
What stops a score from being written to flatter a client?
An independent second reader holds a documented veto on publishing any score. The share of baselines that conclude no action is published every year, as is the share of revenue that is measurement against the share that is editorial. A study can conclude that nothing is wrong.
Who reads, and are they named?
Readings are made blind, by more than one reader, who do not know which house they are reading or why. A certificate does not issue unless they agree past the house threshold, and disagreement is recorded rather than averaged away. Reader identity is held in the terms of engagement, not published.
Will you work with our competitor?
Editorial exclusivity can be bought, scoped to a named competitive set, term-boxed and renewable. The instrument itself is never exclusive, at any price, to anyone. An index one party can close is not an index.
What does the House own?
The Assay™ and Standing Wave™, the Touchstone™ research program, the house tools, and two imprints: Rebel.Rebel Press for records of companies, and Wonder Kids for everything else. Every published designation is listed at the registry.
How do I check that something came from this House?
Every published piece carries a designation. Enter it at /verify. A designation that does not resolve there was not struck by the house. References are never reused, never reassigned, and never renumbered to tidy a gap.
Imprints
The House publishes under two imprints: Rebel.Rebel Press, for records of companies, and Wonder Kids, for everything else.
Investors
The instrument run at the investment decision: the four moments in a hold, the portfolio read, and the governance that holds the number. The investor page →