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

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.

business disasters with Evan Davis

Business Nightmares with Evan Davis is the must-see TV show, made in partnership with The Open University. This show tells the stories of the world’s most momentous business disasters and how they happened. The show documents the damage caused and the lessons that should be learned.  This fantastic three-part series examines business nightmares in detail and highlights the three fundamental areas in which disasters occur: The episodes are called: Doomed Designs, Marketing Mess-ups and Disastrous Decisions. The show features many case studies from businesses that got it wrong.

Unfortunately, the final episode is tomorrow (Thursday 19th May at 8pm on BBC2). The good news is that you can catch the first two episodes for the next eight days on BBC iPlayer by clicking here.

Business owners (including myself) do seem to fear failure, however, failure can be the best thing if we learn how to understand it, learn from it and recover from it. Part of my CIM Professional Diploma in Marketing involves my researching case studies and white papers. It is interesting that the April 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review was called “The Failure Issue” and it comprises many case studies of how businesses turned around their companies from failure level. I am still a firm believer that learning from others mistakes is better than making your own!

Since studying for my Diploma, I have learned that the subjects I have covered in my book Do a Madonna have been quoted by the world famous marketeers such as Handy, Belbin, Norton and Kaplan. Do a Madonna has been written in an easily-digestible format for new business owners and it includes some of the case studies mentioned in this TV show as well as others. You can purchase a copy of Do a Madonna by clicking here.

Sunny Worthing Food and Drink Guide

Sunny Worthing Food and Drink Guide

We are the proud designers of the first ever Sunny Worthing Food and Drink Guide.

This interesting project utilised many skills from within our branding agency. First we created a concept for the front cover design, and one inside page. We wanted to promote the ‘Sunny Worthing’ them, so we added sun rays around the Worthing Town Centre Initiative logo. We then created a ’sea’ effect using a combination of illustrations and photo effects to create a rustic effect.

Next, to continue with the ’sunny’ theme, we created a ’sun’ with food objects such as strawberries and chillies. Once this concept was signed off, we then set to work importing all the catalogue data from Excel documents supplied by Worthing Town Centre Initiative. We set all the data in the listing style that had been approved by our client. This was a lengthy task as there are over 125 restaurant listings distributed over 40 pages!

The brochure was then printed with a lovely gloss laminated cover. The whole effect is stunning and we are immensely proud of it.

Manhattan Website Goes Live

It has been a big week of websites for The Brand Surgery. We are currently working on two new websites having just switched Manhattan’s website to ‘live’. It feels so good when we flick the switch! There is lots of testing before that happens though!

The Manhattan website is not just a pretty website, it is functional and is a persuasive sales aid for the Manhattan sales team. You can view the full product range and specifications, check out Manhattan credentials, browse the photo gallery and much more …

With this website, we followed the corporate identity which has already been in place for a number of years. Click here and see what you think. If you fancy a stylish and slick website like this for your business, you know where we are. Just a quick reminder: You can call us on 01903 824229 for an informal discussion.

Hey, here’s a brand new concept …

A branding agency that rewards you for referring your friends and networking buddies.

Simply pass The Brand Surgery referral card to your friends and networking buddies who you think would benefit from receiving our award-winning branding, logo design and website services. Your friend will receive a 10% discount off their very first order placed with us.

Remember to write YOUR name and  YOUR email address on the referral card because after we receive five referral cards with your details on the back, we will email you a voucher for one of our most popular services, each worth over £500:

Which reward will you choose?

• Five hours of design time (this would get you a bespoke double sided A4/A5 flyer or leaflet)

• E-marketing campaign software set-up (with username and password plus one hour of training time)

• One month of blog writing (one blog per week – great for improving your Google ranking)

Further referral cards can be posted or emailed to you by request.

Terms and Conditions:  (1) Referrals must be genuine. (2) Rewards can not be exchanged for money. (3)  Happy networking is essential.

How would you feel if someone stole your logo idea? Would you feel flattered or angry? You can’t stop businesses from copying your logo but you can stop them from using it, by registering your trademark or logo with the Intellectual Property Office.

Where do you start?

We have created a short presentation (below) because we are  frequently being asked how one goes about registering their logo. We registered our logo because as the number one branding agency in Sussex, we know the importance of protection.

We meet many business set-ups who think that registering their logo is a five minute process, when in fact, registering a logo and/or trademark is a four-six month process, whether you decide to register it yourself, or you decide to use a trade mark lawyer. How do you know whether to use a trade mark lawyer or not? Simple. Watch our short presentation and you will find out.

Design and protect your logo from plagiarism

Imagine you’ve been brainstorming for months, created a slick new logo and website, only to find out another business has previously registered your chosen name. Our presentation  shows you how to prevent this happening and how to protect your logo and/or trademark from plagiarism.

The Brand Surgery works in partnership with a dedicated trade mark lawyer because we know that your logo is one of your most precious business assets.  Call us on 01903 824229 for an information discussion on how to protect your logo or trade mark.

We listen to you. We design for you. We protect you.