We all know that in marketing we should use the KISS method – Keep It Simple Stupid! or Keep it Simple & Straightforward is the more polite version. We have applied this theory to our new Mission Statement which is:

The Brand Surgery brings branding excellence at affordable prices to all businesses in Great Britain.

You can’t get much clearer than that! We bring the same jargon free business ethics to all of our services. If this is the first time you have discovered our blog, here is a little more about The Brand Surgery.

The Brand Surgery is a branding agency and offers services such as: Branding consultancy, logo design, design for print, website design & development, PR services, e-marketing services, blog writing services, copywriting services, photography, Illustration and SMS marketing
The Brand Surgery believes in the principle of Givers Gain. We give branding advice and give help to businesses by offering high-end branding services at realistic prices. Our tried-and-tested formula to marketing is HONESTY and HELPING OTHERS. We help businesses and we put ourselves in their shoes. We believe that using honesty when helping our clients with their marketing and promotions is the way forward.

Clients we have helped are so pleased with our expertise that they have passed our name to other businesses that also want to grow. We have advised all of our clients that good branding, marketing and promotions is the key to standing out, especially when the economy is tough. Customers are going to buy from businesses that look professional and established. The customers that have taken our branding advice have thrived throughout the recession.

Everything we advise our clients to do, we test on our business first – from customer care to the envelopes we post our marketing packs in. Give as you would like to receive is our motto for helping businesses to grow.

If you like our business philosophy, then we would love to work with you. Visit our website on www.thebrandsurgery.co.uk or call 01903 824229. We hope you enjoy looking at the rest of our website.

Viking passengers experience 39 hours delay

I don’t know … I’ve been gone for two weeks and the blogging has just stopped. Luckily I came back when I did …

It is actually a major miracle that I made it back after my Egyptian adventures. Drift snorkelling isn’t for Vicky Vaughan. Especially when one’s face mask doesn’t fit. And double-especially when one is extremely short-sighted. Treble-especially when there are twenty identical looking boats which are 200 metres apart, with a strong current and you can’t remember the name of your boat. I have to say that my drift-snorkelling experience was pretty scary, and I am not sure if I still want to swim the channel to raise funds for my charity, Talent within You next year.

Bad Branding Experience

The swimming was just one adventure! The second was my delay coming home. We were delayed by 39 hours and 40 minutes no thanks to Viking Airlines. The worst part about our delay was that Viking couldn’t be bothered to communicate with its 200 passengers in person. They faxed a letter to Sharm airport to tell us the plane had been cancelled. I was travelling alone and if I hadn’t been so well travelled, would have been very frightened. To Viking’s credit, they did provide accommodation for two evenings. If they had of been honest and said we would be staying another two nights, we could of relaxed. Instead, they had us check-in and check-out of the hotel three times. We had four departure times conveyed to us via an Egyptian rep with pigeon English.

The above experience has left me with a bad memory and is what I call BAD branding! Viking should be sitting on the naughty step for a long time. They have broken their brand promise which is (according to their website): Our experienced team has a philosophy of excellent customer service to ensure your flight experience is exemplary.We look forward to being of service to you! LOL!

The last bad experience was with Breo watches. I purchased a Breo Roam watch on the outbound Viking flight, and it was supposed to be water resistant to 10m. Well trust me, Breo watches  are not water resistant. And what’s more, they will not give me my money back because I have no receipt, thanks to Viking Airlines! Answer from Breo to my request for a replacement or refund: Apologies for the experience with the watch. Unfortunately, In accordance with our Returns Policy (http://www.breo.com/customerservices.php) “Returns and exchanges will only be processed if accompanied with proof of purchase. This includes all airline purchases and items bought through resellers”. What an utterly useless response when Viking couldn’t even send a plane to take me home so I could get a receipt!

Good branding experience

Good branding though is the service I received from HSBC holiday insurance, which comes free with HSBC banking. They refunded £25 per 12 hours (OK a bit stingy I know), but they did it by BACs on the phone. It was so easy. Thank you.

So after all of this, I did have a great holiday. We stayed at Three Corners St. George in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The weather was gorgeous. I had great company with my friends who I met at the hotel. I would go to Sharm El Sheikh again – it’s great to be able to trust the weather in March.

While I’ve been away sunning myself, my brand doctors and nurses have been busy working on three websites, brochures, rebrands and adverts. We are also writing a number of press releases for businesses on a national level. Plus the long awaited book, is back from the proof reader, and we are just about to send it to the publisher.  Go to www.doamadonna.com for a sneak preview! Watch this space!

Call Vicky at The Brand Surgery (best branding company in West Sussex) on 01903 824229 or email vicky@thebrandsurgery.co.uk if you would like to give your business some urgent branding medical attention.

Rebranded Coastliner buses are launched

As you may know, we publish the Coastliners Magazine on behalf of Stagecoach, with our sister company Pulse.

We always work hard to ensure the cover of the magazine will not date – especially as the Coastliners magazine has a shelf-life of six months. Although this magazine ran over Christmas, we didn’t want to make the cover too Christmassy as it had to last through to March 2010.

Hidden illustration talent

The boss – and original Brand Doctor, Vicky Vaughan, decided it was time to unveil her hidden illustration talents and created the above masterpiece! Wow! She illustrated the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth and The Brighton Dome, which represented the Coastliner route from end-to-end.  The added benefit of this illustrated cover design, was that the colours Vicky chose, followed the Stagecoach South corporate identity and  branding. The cover was presented to our client, approved, then printed and is actually still in circulation now.

Not long after the magazines were printed, we received a call from Stagecoach South, who were so impressed with Vicky’s illustrations, they commissioned her to illustrate six further landmarks across the south coast in the same style as she created for the cover.

Official launch of illustrations

Illustrations of landmarks along the Coastliners route

We’ve been keeping this work top secret at the request of our client, until now! At last, we have been given permission to tell the world about where the landmarks would appear. As you can see in the photo above, Vicky’s illustrations were part of a design for Coastliner buses.

There are 40 buses in total which will be wrapped in this unique design, and there are four different designs:

• Worthing
• Brighton
• Chichester
• Portsmouth

Vicky says: “I was so proud to see the illustrations in their finished format. The illustrations took a long time, especially the HMS Victory with all it’s ropes, and the Chichester Market Cross with all the fine detail. It was so worth it, so see my illustrations printed so large. I believe these buses will be cruising across from Brighton to Portsmouth for the next few years, and I certainly won’t mind being stuck behind one of the Coastliner buses in future!”

Illustrations can be used for a number of marketing solutions

Now we have unleashed this creative talent from Queen Vic, why not consider commissioning Vicky to do one for you. Illustrations are excellent for:

• Websites
• Brochures and leaflets
• Posters
• Newsletters and magazines
• Books
• Exhibition graphics
• Livery signage
• Packaging

Illustrations of landmarks along the Coastliners route

There's no candles, but we're all wishing Wish the best! Paul Sloan, Director of Wish cuts the launch cake.

Congratulations to Wish who are now officially launched. The launch party took place at the Wish offices in Billingshurst. We adored the purple and white flowers, balloons and ribbons that complimented the Wish marketing collateral (that The Brand Surgery designed) so well.

If you missed our last blog on Wish, you can click here to find out more about Wish Financial. In brief: Wish Financial approached us in Autumn 2009 and briefed us to design a sleek, contemporary, fresh corporate website, keeping to Wish’s existing corporate identity. Wish’s brand colour is a rich purple – purple is a great business colour because of the colour psychology connected with it. Purple represents royalty and wealth. It is also a spiritual colour, so needs to be used wisely to ensure it compliments the industry it is presenting, in this case finance.

Wish specialise in the following areas:

• Mortgages
• General Insurance
• Commercial Solutions
• Personal Protection
• Savings & Investments
• Retirement Planning

Wish have over 30 years of collective experience in financial planning and it was this experience we feel we successful incorporated within the website design. The Brand Surgery, branding and website design agency, Worthing, West Sussex have also designed Wish’s corporate brochure, estate agent leaflet and posters. The marketing collateral we have designed reflects Wish’s website branding, creating a strong and memorable corporate identity.

Congratulations Wish, we wish you all the best!

There's no candles, but we're all wishing ...

TalentWithinYou is now officially LIVE!

Visit our brand new website to find out more about Talent Within You, and how we helped Jack Ford. If you’ve got a talent why not register on our new website and chat to other talented kids, add applications and widgets to your profile page, upload pictures, videos and much more!

To contact us about your talent you can use our online form.

To register for Talent Within You click here.

Talent Within You finds, helps and cares for children who have a special talent. We believe that every child has a talent no matter what. It is our job to unleash that talent and help to develop it.

Talent Within You has achieved Gift Aid status

The Brand Surgery have been working hard to get Talent Within You off the ground so we can start receiving donations. The website will be live very soon and businesses will be able to choose the child they sponsor, and then also check a Gift Aid box which means we can claim tax and more money will go towards Jack Ford and talented children like Jack Ford, Worthing’s potential British ice-skating champion.

The Talent Within You website also comprises:

• A community-style website so talented kids can talk to one another
• Animated banner graphics
• Search-engine optimised copywriting
• Stunning photography taken by our very own in-house photographer
• Excellent graphic design and Talent Within You logo and branding
• Paypal gateway for donations and sponsorship
• Blog writing for SEO

The Talent Within You website is a community-style website with the functionality of Facebook, such as user feeds and group and page creation. You will also be able to create your personal easy-customisable profiles (drag and drop design facility) as well as take advantage of the photo album facility and also add a video onto your profile page.

So, you will soon see what The Brand Surgery (website design company in Worthing, West Sussex) have done for the launch of Talent Within You. Let us help launch your business too.

Call Vicky at The Brand Surgery on 01903 824229 or email vicky@thebrandsurgery.co.uk.

EcomSurgery is a new ecommerce website system from The Brand surgery

We have been listening to what you want and we have developed a brand new ecommerce website solution at a price to suit most business setups and SME marketing budgets. Our ecommerce websites have been especially developed in-house because the feedback we received from you was:

Here are our latest websites, designed at The Brand Surgery, and developed using our bespoke EcomSurgery system:

EcomSurgery is an ecommerce system from The Brand Surgery. Click here to go to our EcomSurgery demo site. Username: admin  Password: demo

The benefits of ecomSurgery:

• Get paid instantly BEFORE you release your goods!
• You don’t need to waste time invoicing – our software generates automatic invoices.
• Your shop is available to anyone in the world – you are not limited to one high street.
• Your customers can find you by accident, as well as a purpose visit. Think about all the websites you have accidentally discovered without trying!
• More and more people have access to the internet.

Selling your products online is cheaper than and less complicated than you think. Whether you are selling cosmetics, books, clothes or insurance, we can help build you an eye-catching shop with online presence so you can start selling your products within a few weeks.

Ecomsurgery websites are easy to setup and get running and in just a week or so, you will be able to sell your products and/or services. Ecomsurgery features and facilities are much more advanced than standard or off-the-shelf ecommerce websites. Your online customers will be amazed at the quality, performance and sleekness of your new online shop.

Why buy an EcomSurgery website?

• Because our branding expertise ensures your online shop will appeal to the customers you want more of;
• Because ecomsurgery websites are easy for your customers to navigate;
• Your visitors can find your products quickly;
• You can promote your best selling and latest items;
• Unlimited number of products and categories;
• Promote your featured and related products;
• All payment gateways made simple to install – from Paypal to Sage;
• You don’t have to stock your shop, you just populate your online shop with pictures of stock;
• Your own admin area;
• Keep it up-to-date yourself – no to low maintenance costs;
• Powerful search facility;
• Worldwide shipping and tax options;
• Auto-email confirmation of orders;
• Auto-invoice after the product has been purchased – less admin time;
• Free changes for one month after completion*;
• Free submission to search engines;
• Our website agency is based in West Sussex – close to Gatwick, Horsham, Crawley, Brighton, Chichester, Arundel and only an hour away from London;
• All these benefits from only £1500.

Add-on ecommerce modules include:

• Blog writing;
• SEO services;
• E-newsletters and E-marketing;
• Copywriting;
• Bespoke logo design and branding advice

* Terms and conditions apply