There we were, dispensing sage advice to clients about effective branding, including rebranding for those whose brands had begun to acquire anonymity through being, shall we say, a little outdated.

This sad affliction presents with a number of common symptoms to which the sufferer is often oblivious. These include persisting with an old logo or corporate design program when the nature of the company has changed.

Let’s go back to day one of a typical successful business. Everyone is bright eyed and bushy tailed. Everyone has the necessary expertise in their chosen field. But that’s just the basics.

It is equally necessary to ensure the outfit has the right branding — with the presence and power to connect immediately with prospects, turn them into clients and keep them coming back for more.

So the business chugs along very nicely, thank you. For quite some time, the brand will have a personality with strong visual appeal that resonates with your market.

But then, the most quiet, insidious enemy of all comes into play. Time. Time which makes your design and look seem outdated when compared to emerging competitors, with their more modern look, sleeker graphics, brighter presence. Suddenly you’re no longer the belle of the ball.

Irony of ironies, we saw it was starting to happen to us. So we went into rebranding mode with a vengeance. We began by discarding the logo that had served us so well for so long.

Suddenly it had become a bit naff. Quaint. Cardinal sins for a design, communications and marketing outfit, that was so ready to pinpoint the shortcomings of others.

After that, our rebranding exercise became a bit like cleaning a spot off a wall. The cleaned area, now so bright and beautiful, immediately made its surroundings a bit dowdy.

Which led to the obvious revamping of the stationery and other bits and pieces that featured our branding.

And then (drum roll) there was the website. This really was proof that we are all our own worst clients.

We mucked about for ages, fixing this, streamlining that. Adding stuff. Removing it. Squeezing it. Massaging it. No client would have permitted such time consuming self-indulgence.

Often it all got too hard and our voices too loud. So we put the whole (expletive deleted) puzzle on the back burner. Again and again. And all too glad to get back deeply involved in client tasks to prevent us facing our own.

A late night bout of soul-searching saw us ask ourselves why we could do effective, often award-winning work for our clients, while letting our own stuff languish.

It came down to reviewing advice we had been giving to clients about rebranding and applying it to ourselves.

In the end, it was really that simple. We hope you like the results.