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

The Brand Surgery goes green

Hey look! The boss has gone greentastic! She’s only recycling her old recycle bins from Worthing Borough Council as plant tubs. What fantastic planters these tubs make! Vicky has planted sugar snap peas, and potatoes and they are almost bursting out the planters waiting to be eaten! Can you get more eco than that?

Along with recyling all her empty wine bottles (and there is a lot of them) we are well on the way to be carbon neutral, along with celebrities like Matt Bellamy, frontman of rock band Muse.

We’ve found these cool websites if you are interesting in following in our footsteps!

• www.Carbonoffset.com
• www.globalcool.org
• funkyeco.sourcingeco.com/

If you fancy saving money on your print bills, whilst saving the planet at the same time, give us a call! We have lots of green e-marketing solutions such as blogging and e-shot, e-zine, and e-newsletter design, and of course, brilliant website design and development. Call Vicky on 01903 824229 for a confidential, no obligation chat.

Blogging services

Blogging … SEO … Keywords … What does it all mean?

The word ‘blog’ is an abbreviation of weblog. Weblog is a log of activities that the blogger has been up to (ooh err). Every organisation, business, charity and artist should keep a blog to encourage visitors to their website, which in turn generates sales. Some organisations even use a blog site as their main website.

To see a good example of blogging, click here

Within one hour of writing of our article on Rebrand Margate, The Brand Surgery website launched to Page 1, No. 3 of Google (if one typed Rebrand Margate into the search bar). This demonstrates how the power of blogging is an excellent tool for search engine optimisation (SEO)! Search Engines such as Google love fresh content, so writing a blog means your website will be searched regularly!

We can hear you asking … “Would anyone who typed in Rebrand Margate be a good potential customer to us?”. We guestimated that the appeal of The Apprentice would be huge and that out of the 1000s of people that clicked on our website, we would get one enquiry. We got ten. Not bad for one hour of random blogging.

Also, the more interesting your website is, the more people will come back to visit and back links will be created – another brilliant SEO tool! Blogs give your site more credibility and thus will generate interest especially if you use the right keywords, which is what The Brand Surgery will help you with.

From only £150pm, we will write one blog entry per week using stories and keywords related to YOUR business.

Call us on +44 (0)1903 824229 or email vicky@thebrandsurgery.co.uk to find out more about how blog can dramatically increase your website traffic and sales.

If all this is double dutch to you, and you feel you and your colleagues would benefit from a spot of gobbledegoop-FREE training, call us on 01903 824229 NOW!

Relaxing music for mind body and soul

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The above illustration is taken from the magazine we publish. You can see the full Gullivers in Margate cartoon if you visit Margate and step on a Stagecoach Loop bus before the end of August.

We can’t wait to see next week’s The Apprentice. We will see the TV contestants attempt to rebrand Margate. We are extremely familiar with Margate as we publish In the Loop magazine for Stagecoach in East Kent. In the Loop is a passenger magazine which focuses on Margate, Ramsgate and Broadstairs, and we regularly visit this seaside resort to find out what is hot and happening! This area is known as the Isle of Thanet, and as well as the kiss-me-quick ambience, it has a past reputation as a smuggling haunt! There are lots of smuggling caves, ghosts and haunted buildings. Thanet is gorgeous, with miles of sandy beaches. It has lots to offer – you could even have a holiday and help to save Thanet’s beautiful beaches at the same time. The Thanet Coastal Project has many family and kids beach safari days. So you can relax and polish you halo at the same time …

With word out about the upcoming Margate rebrand, we were (and still are) feeling protective towards our good friend Margate. So we did some Googling to find out what The Apprentice contestants were up to. We came across an article in Your Thanet News. Howard Ebbison, one of the contestants, came up with the idea of launching the town as a gay resort. We will see Mona Lewis strongly disagreeing with the idea – as we saw last night, Mona is an excellent negotiator – so will it go Howard’s way? No pun intended! The Thanet Pride event is held is in Margate each summer and is a huge success drawing in crowds of over 5000, so maybe Howard isn’t far off the mark. We are looking forward to the seeing Sir Alan Sugar in the board room next week.

Whichever group wins the rebrand Margate project is invited to come and help us to Rebrand Britain.

Just in case you didn’t know … We have launched a national campaign to Rebrand Britain. We want to evolve Britain’s profile, so it is once again, known as the outstanding, innovative great British brand it used to be. Our campaign is called LET’S REBRAND BRITAIN. Click here to see the website! Please fill in our anonymous survey and tell us what you think of Britain!

For this project, have been busy researching to find the gemstones of the Britishness. We have been greatly helped by the fact that Britain’s Got Talent is screening just now. Susan Boyle, Hollie Steele and Diversity are (in our opinion) the most talented stars from the show so far. We need stars like Susan Doyle, Hollie Steele and Diversity to come forward and support Let’s Rebrand Britain, and to encourage other kids to explore their talents from a young age. Who knows, we could grow a whole new talented Britain, and anti-social behaviour and knife crime will become a thing of the past.

If you didn’t see Diversity Dance Group last night, then now is your chance! See our special story and another creative dance routine from Diversity dance routine by clicking here.

Diversity Dance Group

Brad Pitt does Bread Pitt

Good old Harvey Nichols’ does it again. We discovered these great postcards on the Creative Review blog and we thought we should share our find.

Whenever we’re meeting clients in London, we always manage to take a trip to Harvey Nichols. Now we have the perfect excuse to walk out with one of their carrier bags without breaking the bank! These postcards (designed by Ruan Milborrow and Mark Nightingale of Mr H) are perfect credit crunch friendly purchases!

If you are feeling a bit flusher, check out some of Harvey Nichols’ designer fashions for your feet and your body. Choose from some MARC JACOBS sandals or GEORGINA GOODMAN patent stilettos, or maybe some MIU MIU patent bow front peep toes. Of course there is also CHARLOTTE OLYMPIA, NICHOLAS KIRKWOOD, JONATHAN KELSEY or CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN.

Have fun!! Can you think of any other pun celebrities?

Russell Brand as Rissole BrandKate Moss does Skate Moss! Harvey Nichols

The Air Comfort Centre

We are proud to announce the birth of the Air Comfort Centre. We love a happy story to come out of the doom and gloom; so a happy story is what we’ve created.

Meet Mike Higginson. Mike is the director of the Air Comfort Centre in Worthing, West Sussex. What makes Mike’ story so special is that he was made redundant in December last year. However, he didn’t sit and grumble, or feel sorry for himself. Instead, he put the plans in place to set up his own business, and what better industry to set up in … One that Mike knows very well – the AIR industry. His next brilliant move was to take a trip to our surgery, full of brand doctors and nurses. And alas! A star was born …

Now our brief was … “We want you to make air conditioning cute!”. Plus Mike does have a obsession with polar bears (don’t ask), so the two went hand-in-hand. We added some orange, to give an all-round warmer, cuter feeling . Mike had the great idea of affiliating with Polar Bears International, and the World Wildlife Fund.

The Air Comfort Centre specialises in:

• Air conditioners
• Air purifiers
• Ceiling fans
• Dehumidifiers
• Evaporation coolers
• Fans
• Fan heaters
• Panel heaters
• Patio heaters
• Storage heaters
• Workshop heaters
• Humidifiers
• Insect killers
• Ozone generators
• Spares: vacuum cleaners, water filters, weather stations, and even illuminated garden knomes!

The Brand Surgery designed the logo, the corporate identity templates, the stationery, signage and web banner. Unfortunately, Mike was already tied into an Indian web company before we could get in. Tsssk. We have heard that the money you save in hiring these companies, does end up in timely frustration with language barriers – even if you do have an English middle-man. So our advice is think carefully before you invest in long-term ’solutions’ with language barriers.

If you have been made redundant, then don’t despair. Most millionaires come out of recessions! Think about setting up a business, and then take a trip to our surgery, where our brand doctors and nurses will ensure your business remains in a healthy state. Call Vicky on 01903 824229 for a friendly no-obligation chat! Or contact us on our CONTACT US (top left-hand grey tab).

OK, this is an American theory, but we all know the UK is not far behind. The above presentation was given at the recent Economist Conference. The Brand Bubble by John Gerzema and Ed Lebar says that we must embed energy and passsion into our brands to survive. We should be using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and must use compassion as well as passion within our marketing.

To see how this could help your business, call Vicky, our brand expert on 01903 824229.

Let's Rebrand Britain

Are you proud to be British? Do you think summertime, with meadows swaying in the winds? Do you think of innovation and forward thinking? Do you remember our unique history, our arts and culture? Or the monarchy? Our freedom? Nice happy feelings? Or do you think of Vicky Pollard, hoodies, knife crime, MRSA, bullies, tax, unemployment, wet weather, delayed trains because of leaves on the tracks? Matthew d’Ancona recently explored the meaning of ‘Britishness’ in a Radio 4’s programme. You can listen to it on iplayer.

If you like people and places, but not politics, then Let’s Rebrand Britain is for you! We want to find out how many of the British public would be behind helping us to make Britain, Great Britain again! Take part in our online survey and tell us what you think of Britain and how you would change it. Once we have the results, we will start to rebrand Britain, like we would rebrand a business – it is the same process, only on a much larger scale! Unless we all want to pay more tax, and take orders from above, we need to start doing something. So less of: “I remember when…”. This is your chance to take control

Let’s Rebrand Britain is looking for a large corporate company to partner with for this project. The company must be British and passionate about Rebranding Britain. Please call 01903 824229 or email us at info@rebrandbritain.co.uk if you have any useful contact information.

The Let’s Rebrand Britain website and idea has been designed and developed by The Brand Surgery.

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Beat the Recession. Make an Impression™!

After attending a recent Twitter seminar by Andy Headworth of Sirona Consulting, the boss decided to Google herself. Then soon discovered that an article she had written last September, called BEAT THE RECESSION, MAKE AN IMPRESSION!™ had actually been published. Hoorah! We are now celebrating!!

The Womens Business Clubs has a brilliant website, which is packed with lots of information. BEAT THE RECESSION, MAKE AN IMPRESSION!™, obviously being one of the better articles There are 5 free easy steps to get yourself ahead, including “Do a Madonna™”…

Don’t get set in your ways. Fashions change and you need to keep one step ahead. You can evolve your image without confusing your client base if you do it properly and use a good branding agency. Even if you despise Madonna, you have to respect her. Madonna is 50 and more popular than ever. She may be mature, but she is still sexy, interesting and she sells millions of records. Madonna’s products never lack in quality, they become more interesting. She has cared for her image every step of the way, and you should do the same for your business. Stimulate your customers. Excite them. Give them a good experience.

Call Vicky on 01903 824229, or email us for further information.