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

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!

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.

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.

As you know by now, our Facebook branding and posting secured an income of £1500 and attracted over 3000 people to one of our recent events. We didn’t spend one pence on advertising.

You can benefit from this amazing promotional tool also as for the month of June, we have reduced our Facebook business page branding fee by 30%. Our usual price starts from £500. During June, our fee will begin from just £350. This price will include us using your existing corporate identity and designing an attractive page to compliment your business website. We will also had one feature for you. This may include a Paypal setup so you can sell a product or service via your Facebook page. Or it could include a You Tube video upload like the one on our Facebook page.

We also offer a Facebook and Twitter posting service too, as well as our hugely successful blogging services, which ensure that our clients have reached the top of page one in Google for their chosen keyword searches, eg, Restaurant Worthing, Country Pub Horsham, Fencing Supplies, Branding Agency Sussex.

When’s the last time you saw a good website without the Twitter, Facebook and Linked In logos? Social media will compliment your website, and now with our fantastic June offer, what are you waiting for?

Latest Facebook pages:

• The Brand Surgery
• Broadwater Royal Wedding Picnic
• Do a Madonna
• Talent Within You

Facebook branding by The Brand Surgery

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.

Only four days to go … Until William and Katherine tie the knot. Now we’re thinking – do we or don’t we? Would our customers really appreciate receiving A.N.Other advertising ‘eshot‘ branded ‘Congratulations to Will and Katherine’? There is a fine line between using events as an opportunity for marketing – how many of you sent out Happy Easter direct marketing campaigns?

Royal Wedding Marketing Gone Mad

We’ve been looking at some of the quirkiest Royal Wedding gimmicks on the the market and we were astounded when we Stumbled Upon these:

The Royal Wedding for Dummies! Whatever next? We wonder how many copies have sold!

Royal Wedding Refrigerator We thought they meant a fridge magnet, but oh no! This is a refrigerator with a difference. Will you decorate your kitchen to match?

Crown Jewels Condoms With the relaxed rules about memorabilia branding. Anything goes so long as it is tasteful – apparently.

Royal Wedding Dog Clothing A selection of different messages for you to choose from.

Broadwater Royal Wedding Picnic

We do have a real reason to promote The Royal Wedding because The Brand Surgery have been out in the community again. The boss, Vicky Vaughan, has organised a MASSIVE community event to celebrate this fantastic event which starts at 4pm om Friday 29th April on Broadwater Green, Worthing. There is an amazing line-up – Dave Benson Phillips is bringing along his gunge tank – and guess who is going to get gunged? Tim Loughton MP, Deputy Mayor of Worthing, Ann Barlow and Cllr Alan Rice have all agreed to be gunged if £500 is raised via votes. It only costs £1 a vote and you can by Paypal on our Facebook page (designed by The Brand Surgery) or you can come down on the day and vote. There is lots more fun, including entertainment from our Worthing Idol 2010 (website by The Brand Surgery)contestants and music excerps from the Seussical Musical courtesy of Anyone for Theatre?

Staying with the subject of weddings, the boss purchased some Union Jack bunting yesterday for an impromptu BBQ. Now she can’t decide whether to hang it outside the front of her house – is it patriotic or chavvy? Unfortunately, she had to abandon a project she was working on a few years ago. REBRAND BRITAIN was all about getting the community spirit back into the UK – until someone accused us of being part of the BNP because our logo sported a Union Jack. Logos and brands are all about memories. What does the Union Jack mean to you? You can read more about brand perceptions in Vicky’s book: Do A Madonna.

The Brand Surgery has this week launched their Brand New Successfuel™ – fuel designed to make your business go the extra mile. The Brand Surgery recommends this award-winning blend of branding and website expertise to get success for your business. Want to know more? Call Vicky on 01903 824229 for more information.

Successfuel™ can help you with anything from branding, website design & development, logo design, marketing and many more of our exciting range of services. Just look below to see some of our most recent work:

Costa Oil Illustration and Packaging:

Costa Oil is Proto Restaurant Group’s brand new olive oil and it means a lot to owner Andy Sparsis. The Brand Surgery designed all the packaging and the oil logo to display the pride of the oil and show customers how special it really is.

Balik Spa Branding and Logo Design:

Balik Spa is a new Fish Pedicure Spa in Worthing. They came to The Brand Surgery to create a brand identity, logo design and website design. We have given them a funky website holding page whilst we work on their main website. Check it out here.

Manhattan Website:

Manhattan Furniture hasn’t had a new website for years and they felt it was time to give themselves a bit of an update so they came to The Brand Surgery. We recommend you refresh aspects of your brand every 2-3 years so we were very happy to help. The brand new website is due for launch in the next few weeks and everyone at Manhattan and The Brand Surgery are extremely excited about it.

Stagecoach Publishing and Website:

The Brand Surgery design the Stagecoach Coastliner and Buzz magazines for Stagecoach South. These magazines go out to all bus customers on the Coastliner services and are read by thousands of people. We have also been involved in the design and development of the Coastliner 700 website which gives you all the information you need on the route as well as adverts for various attractions along the way.

While we’re on the subject of success, Vicky Vaughan received her certificate for the NVQ Level 3 in Management she passed earlier on in the year. Everyone at The Brand Surgery is extremely proud of Vicky and we thought we’d share a picture of Vicky with her certificate:

Get yourself and your business successful with The Brand Surgery’s Successfuel™ – call us on 01903 824229 or email us at info@thebrandsurgery.co.uk for more information on Successfuel™, logo design, website design and development, branding and much more.