The Brand Surgery - Branding Agency, Graphic Design and Website Design in Worthing, West Sussex

Official Diamond Jubilee logo

2012 is going to be a monumental year for the UK as far as events go … It’s the year of the Diamond Jubilee AND the 2012 Olympics. And we should all be celebrating, arranging themed events, boogying-on-down at a record number of street parties to spread happiness, love and joy … Yes, it’s time for BIG SOCIETY to get even BIGGER.

There is one snag though … One of these international events is branded so far up its own you-know-what, that it won’t allow UK citizens to promote Olympic related events using the word ‘Olympic’! Yes it’s brand-awareness gone bonkers. The Olympic Committee’s ‘brand protection document states: “The information provided is intended to help people stay within the law and LOCOG expects it to be used in good faith. In areas of doubt, please respect the spirit of the law and do not undertake any activity which is contrary to LOCOG’s aims and objectives.”

The document includes a flowchart of controlled representations:

The Olympic Symbol (ie the five interlocking rings)
The Olympic Motto
(‘Citius Altius Fortius’ / ‘Faster Higher Stronger’)
the words:
“Olympic(s)”
“Olympiad(s)”
“Olympian(s)”
(or anything similar to them, or translations of them)
The Paralympic Symbol (ie the three “agitos”)
The Paralympic Motto
(Spirit in Motion)
the words:
“Paralympic(s)”
“Paralympiad(s)”
“Paralympian(s)”
(or anything similar to them, or translations of them)

We do consider that it is in rather poor taste to be so over-protective and to not ’share’ in times of economic melt down. You can download the full document by clicking here. We strongly suggest that you do read the ambiguous document if you are thinking of designing a poster to advertise your ‘OxxxxxC’ event!

Diamond Jubilee Celebrations are for everyone!

On the plus side, the Diamond Jubilee organisers have included a useful page on their website dedicated to event branding. Organisers of Diamond Jubilee Events will find links to the official emblem (above) so one can download and include official emblems for their event promotions.  You can find this page by clicking here.

In contrast to the Olympic brand guidelines, the Diamond Jubilee guidelines advise: “The official emblem is available, free of charge, for download from this website. It is available for use for activities associated with the Diamond Jubilee celebrations including community and national events, publications, retail and merchandising. View guidelines for use. It is intended that the emblem be used widely by individuals, organisations, companies and charities for celebrations to mark the Diamond Jubilee. This includes use for commercial purposes and advertising.

How can two major event committees send out such contrasting brand messages?

At The Brand Surgery, we publish a variety of magazines and promotional material and already we have been asked to promote a number of events (after our Wow Factor success back in November 2011). One of our clients is so concerned with the misleading Olympic brand guidelines that they have decided to pull out of promoting any Olympic themed events within their customer information magazine. We don’t blame them as the olympic guidelines suggest that promoting community events with the olympics logo maybe construed as ‘passing off’ of as an official Olympics event.

A message to all of you at Olympics head office. Please get off your high horse – you are not more important than the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and you should take a leaf out from the Official Diamond Jubilee organiser’s book and share your ’symbols’ so everyone can promote this amazing event!

We appreciate that your sponsors pay £millions to use the dreadful 2012 olympics logo – we don’t particularly want ‘that’ logo. However, how did the five interlocking rings symbol created by Pierre De Coubertin in 1914 come to be copyrighted by the International Olympic Committee?

The five interlocking rings have a meaning: “These five rings represent the five parts of the world which now are won over to Olympism and willing to accept healthy competition.” (from Wikipedia so must be true!). Perhaps the Olympics Committee is concerned about a little healthy competition from community events – hardly surprising really. I’m surprised the Olympic Committee sold any tickets with their backward system.

We salute the Diamond Jubilee Committee for getting it so right. We ask that the Olympics Committee consider sharing.

If you would like advice on how to use the Diamond Jubilee emblem on your marketing material and website, please give us a call on 01903 324229 or email vicky@thebrandsurgery.co.uk. We also design exceedingly successful logos which we encourage you to share!

The Brand Surgery, marketing and website agency serving Sussex.

The Review Doctor. Review. Read. Decide.

Welcome to The Review Doctor

Did you know that as a business, if you get stung by another not-so-nice business, you are not protected by Trading Standards or the Ombudsman relevant to the industry that has stung you. These organisations deem you intelligent enough to read through the terms and conditions. So if you want justice, you need to follow the legal process which can be costly.

Having had our fingers burnt on a few occasions, we decided the world needed a Business Review website so businesses like you can read reviews before signing the dotted line.

The Review Doctor asks customers up to questions for each type of business, for example:

• Hairdressers – How long were you kept waiting?

• Accountants – Was the estimate or quote accurate?

• Insurance – Did the Insurance company pay or wriggle out?

There are seven categories: Health & Beauty, Retail, Trade, Leisure, Business Services, Non-profit organisations, Finance/Legal. All kinds of businesses are listed – from dentists to business coaches to website agencies. We are adding more business types every day.

You can win a bottle of bubbly in our prize draw – all you have to do is review a business. It’s that simple. You can also list your business free of charge until the end of November and ask your customers to write good things about you and you can use these as testimonials on your website and other marketing material. Register today!

Our Mission: To make the world a fairer place by giving all businesses and consumers an honest review of all public, private and third sector organisations. Review. Read. Decide!

You can review any public, private or third sector organisation free of charge! Businesses can list their organisation free of charge until the end of 2011.

We LOVE honest businesses. We LOVE good customer care. We want to read good reviews too. This is a website for the good to shine and for the sharks to starve.

It’s high time a website like this was created. What are you waiting for?!!!

Businesses do not have the same support as consumers do. When you are a business – no matter how small you are – the government and the law say that you should take responsibility. There is  no support for businesses if you are ripped off.

The Review Doctor showcases our digital marketing, logo design, graphic design, website design, website development skills. If you like the design of The Review Doctor and would like a similar website for your organisation, give us a call on 01903 824229 and we will be happy to help you.

Vicky Vaughan passes Professional Diploma in Marketing

As you may know, Vicky Vaughan, managing director of The Brand Surgery is in the middle of studying towards a Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) “Professional Diploma in Marketing“.

Fantastic news! Vicky has passed her first unit which means she is quarter of the way to becoming a Chartered Marketer.

The unit brief (Managing Marketing) was to introduce a performance measurement standard into a non-profit organisation. Vicky had to research the full range of  performance measurement standards including ISO 9001, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma, Total Quality Management (TQM) and The Balanced Scorecard (BSC).

With the research done, Vicky matched her case study’s organisational objectives with the most appropriate performance measurement standard which in this case turned out to be The Balanced Scorecard.

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is becoming more popular as a performance measurement standard, although originally it was designed as a strategic planning tool by Kaplin and Norton in the early 90s. It is a fantastic tool because it looks at four perspectives of your business, instead of focusing too much on one perspective at the expense of another. For example, without the BSC you may be so focused on improving your bottom line that you forget about your customer care KPIs.

You can’t do that with BSC: The four perspectives are Finance, Internal Processes and systems, Training and Customers/Stakeholders. And when this system is used, all the departments within an organisation will have a positive cause-and-effect relationship upon each other.

Introducing a performance measurement standard (PMS) into your company will give you a huge competitive advantage, as when you tender for projects, you can list the accreditations. Also, performance measurement standards systemise your company and help to make it ‘lean’ and help you to prioritise your corporate objectives.

The Brand Surgery are planning on introducing The Balanced Scorecard once Vicky has completed the whole course. She has just submitted the second unit which is The Marketing Planning Process. The third unit which she has started is Developing Customer Value through Marketing and Vicky is studying product and brand management for this. The final assignment is Project Management in Marketing which starts in December where one lucky organisation who entered the prize draw has won a free report (they will be the case study).  Then Vicky will be a Chartered Marketer next year.

What other branding agency in Sussex has in-house Chartered Marketeer expertise? When we design websites, we have the strategic marketing knowledge which will keep you one step ahead of your competitors.

Call Vicky on 01903 824229 if you would like to discuss your marketing needs, whether you need a marketing plan or are thinking of introducing a performance measurement standard.

Restaurant marketing and design by The Brand Surgery - click on image to enlarge it.

Food, food, glorious food. We love food so much here at The Brand Surgery.

That may be why we are so busy working for restaurants, take-aways and gastro pubs. We’ve been designing logos for eateries since 2001, and one of our customers likes the logo we designed for him so much that he will not rebrand, even after ten years!

As well as designing logos, we help with restaurant promotion by way of websites, blogging, social media (Twitter, Facebook and Linked In), advertising, e-newsletters, PR, strategic marketing and much more …

Christmas Event Promotions

With the countdown to Christmas now upon us, it is essential to send out your Christmas menus and start advertising your venue to guarantee bookings NOW. There are over 130 restaurants in Worthing alone, so how do you ensure that business office parties book tables in your establishment?

If you don’t have a website, we can get you web presence within a week so you can advertise your Christmas menu and get people to book online. All the websites we have designed for eateries have enabled them to reach page one of Google for their chosen keywords. For example, if you type into Google: “Thai restaurant, Worthing”, Carabao will appear. If you type into Google: “Fish restaurant, Worthing”, The Fish Factory will appear at the top. We can do the same for your restaurant so you get prime position, after all, how many people actually scroll to page 2 or 3 of Google?

We can also send your Christmas menu as a funky, designed e-shot to our mailing list of Worthing businesses within a week or two if you book now. Maybe you want a complete branding overhaul in time for Christmas? No problem.

We can also design Christmas cards, flyers and much more so you can enjoy the season knowing your restaurant is booked. We also work in partnership with The Worthing Journal and some of our new packages include design and a published advert.

Simple. Give Vicky at The Brand Surgery a call on 01903 824229 or email vicky@thebrandsurgery.co.uk. We have four new packages for restaurants, cafes, bistros and other eateries.

So whatever type of Christmas event you need promoting, we have a solution for you. Guaranteed bums on seats!

August 2011. The month British thugs rioted, looted, destroyed communities and shamed Britain’s brand in just a few days.

Social media is being blamed for the rapid spread of the riots throughout London and the UK. Social media is a powerful tool but does have it’s pros and cons. The beauty of social media is that most messages are traceable and can help police to track down these thugs.

Saddest moments (so far) from the UK riots

There are hundreds of sad tales from these riots. For me, the saddest moment was seeing a poor injured man being tricked into thinking he was being helped, while thugs raided his rucksack.

Another tragic tale: Having been born in Croydon, the tale of the House of Reeves, a family owned furniture store which has stood up to two World Wars and a recession, was burned to the ground in just a few hours on Monday night. I feel sorry, yet proud of the Reeves family, who have been so brave.

As for the many independent businesses that have been destroyed – there will be weeks of lost trade which will cause unrepairable damage to their livelihoods and families.

Contingency plans

All businesses should have contingency plans written into their business plans, but how many would include riots? Luckily, Nick Starling from the Association of British Insurers says insurance policies will cover most of the damage and the losses felt by businesses. The only problem is that as most of the businesses are being treated as crime scenes, it will take a time for the loss adjusters to do their work. This will be the time when insurance companies will have to practice what they preach. Will insurance companies deliver on their brand promise? Only time will tell!

Brands riding on the back of the Riots

We found an excellent blog in Marketing Week by Lara O’Reilly who is Marketing Week’s digital and telecoms specialist. Lara said: “Let’s place our bets on how long it will be before a home improvement store or garden centre donates some brooms or a supermarket offers their cleaning products to help with the efforts”.

Lara also noted that El Paso Foods had said on its Facebook page this week: “In these trying times I think we could all benefit from a bit of comfort food, and there are few things more tasty and reassuring than baked enchiladas, full of spicy chicken and topped with lots of bubbling cheese”. You can read more amusing stories by reading Lara’s blog.

Can something good come out of something so bad?

Yes. We were watching the riot news updates last night and saw the terrible damage that rioters did to Miss Selfridge in Manchester. The Miss Selfridge logo appeared on our TV screens for hours, on a BBC channel. How much would Miss Selfridge normally have to pay for this kind of exposure? Luckily for this fashion store, they are part of the Arcadia Group which also owns Dorothy Perkins, Top Shop, Top Man and many more fashion retailers, so this damage could be a blessing in disguise for Miss Selfridge (in the grand scheme of things).

Also more good news … a local artist, Dan Thompson, has made national news by setting up a Twitter hashtag: #riotcleanup. Well done Dan for your quick thinking – ironic how something like this can give you more column inches than your art!

Finally, it’s British disaster aftermaths which showcase the generosity, solidarity and community spirit of the majority of the British public. Although the minority (thugs) have caused millions of pounds worth of damage – the way in which most of us pull together in times of hardship still makes me proud to be British.

Rebranded News of The World

Out of everything bad has to come something good, so we had some fun on a Friday morning and created a ‘pretend’ logo for The Sun on Sunday – which will – according to popular belief – replace the News of the World. (The domain names have already been purchased presumably for their new website)

Phone hacking. What has the world come to? No pun intended. We feel sorry for the 200 innocent people who have lost their job during hard times.

How far would you go to raise publicity for your business? We advise you that there are far better and legal ways, and we can help you with this as all our press releases have got our clients positive column inches where they matter!

Call Vicky at The Brand Surgery – branding agency serving Worthing, Brighton, Arundel, Chichester, Horsham and the whole of Sussex – on 01903 824229.

Vicky Vaughan judges the Open 11

On Friday, Vicky Vaughan was invited to join the selection panel to judge the Open 11 Art Exhibition at Worthing Museum.

Vicky said: “It was an amazing day. I was part of a panel of three judges – my two fellow judges were Nick Toovey from Toovey’s Auctioneers in Washington, West Sussex and Dudley Sawer, Life Drawing Artist extraordinaire, based in Worthing.  There were three categories for us to judge: Sport and Fitness, Celebration and Food for Thought. It was fascinating to see how differently the artists interpreted the subjects.

There were hundreds of entries using all manner of mediums – acrylic, embroidery, water colour, pencil, and pastels. There were a number of 3D projects and sculptures. I can’ wait to see the selected art displayed next week. We also picked out a number of winners who will be revealed in due course – we also created some new prize categories as the standard was so amazing.”

The art exhibition runs from 18th June to 24th September 2011. It is completely free so there is no excuse not to be a culture vulture for the day. If you haven’t been to Worthing Museum yet, you must go. It is amazing – a real gem. It boasts a huge custume collection – so all those dress designers out there – go and see where it all started.

Back to work. On the subject of culture vultures. We are working on the Christmas issues of passenger magazines for Stagecoach South, East Kent and East Sussex. It is interesting designing and researching Christmas events in June. If you have any events coming up, you should add them to our Coastliner 700 website free of charge – there is no catch. Click here.

Digital Marketing Campaign is a Royal Success

Broadwater Community Association is still celebrating after the amazing Royal Wedding Picnic event which attracted over 3000 people and raised £1500 within a few hours.

The success of this event is down to a creative agency called The Brand Surgery who are based in Worthing, West Sussex. The organisers said: “We needed to promote this community event to raise money for a local charity called Broadwater Community Association. The Brand Surgery came up with a fantastic online marketing campaign which included an event website, plus a combination of Facebook, Twitter,
Linked In and blog posting.”

Vicky Vaughan, Managing Director of The Brand Surgery said: “We are thrilled with the success of the Broadwater Royal Wedding Picnic. It was an amazing day. People said they heard about the event via Facebook and Twitter, which just goes to show how powerful social networking is when combined with innovative and creative minds! Whether you want to attract businesses, children, adults or couples to your event, our social media marketing expertise seems to work a treat. Thanks to the brilliant event organisers for their time, passion and enthusiasm.”

We spoke to Vicky Vaughan to find out a few trade secrets to online success.

How does one begin to promote a successful event?
VV: It is best to create a new page on your company website especially for your event. If you don’t have a website, then simply create a new one for your event. Then you need to create Twitter, Facebook and Linked In accounts which should all link to your website. Ideally your social media accounts should be branded to match your organisation’s corporate identity. We created a logo for our event as it is an excellent excuse for marketing, PR and promotional give-aways. Social media is an amazingly cost effective marketing tool.

How did you raise money using social media?
VV: We set up a ‘shop’ in Facebook and people donated through this. They can also donate via our website. Then we energetically tweeted and used our online PR skills.

Why did you decide to get involved with social media?
There is a demand for social media as getting your message out there at a reasonable cost is essential, so armed with our copywriting skills, we launched the first in our range of social media services: blogging. We now have many customers who benefit from this wonderful search engine optimisation (SEO) tool and they all reach top spot in Google for their chosen keyword searches.

Does The Brand Surgery still design logos and websites?
VV: Yes. Our branding and website services are very popular and have won awards for us and our clients. We have in fact just completed a brilliant website for Manhattan Furniture. Look at what they said about us: “The Brand Surgery has just completed our website and we are thrilled with it. They took our brief, and enriched it with innovative ideas using the latest technology and our website is now leaps ahead of our competitors. The Brand Surgery is professional in all communications with us, and the team has made this an enjoyable project. They have looked after us along each step of the way and we would thoroughly recommend The Brand Surgery to any company who wants a competitive edge.” Phil Kethro, Marketing Manager, Manhattan Furniture
Anything else you want to say?
VV: Yes! Just incase you didn’t know, in 2009 we were commissioned to design the entire fleet of Coastliner 700 buses which cruise between Brighton and Portsmouth every 10 minutes. We are still celebrating this achievement. Helen Martin, Marketing Manager at Stagecoach South said:
“We have been working with The Brand Surgery for five years and always find the team enthusiastic and full of new ideas.
Not phased by bigger (literally) projects, The Brand Surgery did a great job of the striking illustrations of south coast iconic images that now brighten up our Coastliner 700 buses.”
Finally, we are soon to become Chartered Marketeers and to celebrate this achievement, we are offering one lucky organisation a free strategic report worth £1000s. Simply email to enter the prize draw. Terms and conditions do apply. Please ask for details. Everything mentioned in this blog is produced in-house. To find out more about how our range of services can give your company a competitive edge, contact
Vicky Vaughan at The Brand Surgery on 01903 824229 or 07909 693172.