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.

CWS had an existing website when they came to The Brand Surgery for help, and were quickly shown what needed to be done to bring them into the modern world of web presence. The old website was completely static and provided CWS with no way of updating other than contacting the website hosts, a very old approach.

We instantly suggested a Content Management System to sit beneath their new website to allow them complete control of the copywriting of the website as well as access to numerous dynamically created sections such as ‘News’, ‘Projects’ and ‘Enterprise Activities’ the latter of which can be submitted by website users via a unique and sophisticated form on the website.

Alongside the website itself, The Brand Surgery explained the importance of the role of social media in modern websites and online marketing and CWS jumped on board, setting up a Linked In and Twitter account, despite early protests against the move.

Caroline Wood from CWS had the following to say:

“We were unsure about the inclusion of social media with the new website as we weren’t sure how it would fit in with our organisation, but The Brand Surgery showed us how key they can be for Search Engine Optimisation and equally how few modern websites don’t include these links. In fact, looking back, I now wonder why we weren’t using Twitter and Linked In to network in the past!”

The website is not all about functionality though, The Brand Surgery’s award winning design team took a shine to the CWS concept and produced a modern yet corporate and business-like design that oozes class. Using CWS’ three main colours, navy blue, sky blue and yellow, we kept the styling simple to create the illusion of space on a website where massive amounts of content resides.

The introduction of modern website technologies such as jQuery, AJAX and CSS3 allowed the use of slick animations and rounded corners to name a few and the use of the Google Maps API allowed us to use interactive maps! Obviously, whilst all this was going on we were ensuring the website was completely cross-browser compatible.

CWS’ brief to us was:

• Modernise the existing website with a fresh design
• Allow CWS to update the website themselves
• Easy to find all information
• Attractive to new and existing businesses
• A resource ‘hub’

Check out their new website at www.coastalwestsussex.org.uk and see if you think we ticked all the boxes, we know we did!

Anyway, after undergoing the process for submitting to both online app repository’s, we thought we’d compare the two processes and have our say on their pro’s and con’s. We have broken the process into several categories.

Development Environment

Ok, so we love both Mac’s and PC’s at The Brand Surgery, the Mac is brilliant for design work, especially when using Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator and the PC is great as a general purpose machine and has many advantages for web development. (Not that Mac’s can’t be used for web development). But put simply, we like the option of choosing what we work on and the Android Market allows us this freedom. We can download the development tools for any platform! Apple however, restrict you to only developing on a Mac, which is somewhat frustrating for those that don’t have a Mac – this could greatly increase the cost of development!

Apple 0 – 1 Android

Cost

If you’re going to enter the world of mobile development, there is going to be a cost involved (at least if you want to use the market leaders) so this is purely a case of who is cheaper! Now, neither development programme is expensive (at least it seems), but Android Market charges $25 (around £16) as a one-off fee. Apple however have a slightly more expensive fee of $99 (around £64) per year. So Android wins again!

Apple 0 – 2 Android

The Review Doctor on the App Store

Sign-up Process

Androids process was quick, simple and intuitive. In fact, if you already have a Google account, you simply associate it to your development account. Easy, brilliant, thank you very much Google!

Apple however, require you to (if you sign-up as a business) provide proof of your companies existence by sending off various documents, etc. and we found them extremely awkward and arduous to deal with! After sending off our certificate from Companies House (as requested) they then changed their rules and wanted something else, and we ended up going backwards and forwards for several days!

Apple 0 – 3 Android

Support

Now it must be said, that we haven’t required much support from either Apple or Android, but Apple does appear to be far more equipped with a plethora of documentations, examples, videos and various other resources within it’s ‘Member Centre’ (presumably what the large cost is for) and although Android does have documentation, Apples is just far superior.

Apple 1 – 3 Android

The Review Doctor on Android Market

Submission Process

This was for us, one of the biggest differences between the two platforms, and to be perfectly honest, a perfect medium would be somewhere between the two!

Android accept pretty much anything onto the Market, once you  have created your app, you fill in the details to be displayed in the Android Market, upload the app and click submit. Then as soon as it has uploaded, and you verify this, the app is live in the Market. Brilliant! Or is it? Not exactly. It’s great for people like The Brand Surgery who are designing and developing quality applications because we get into the Market quickly, but consider for a minute those that are producing apps which are broken, pointless and poorly produced. These apps also get instantly approved and enter the market, filling it with a lot of poor apps to search through. Not ideal!

Let’s look at Apples approach then. You submit your app in much the same way as Android, except your app gets sent off for ‘review’ by one of Apples staff. This obviously allows for the rubbish apps to be rejected (although with some apps on the App Store, you may wonder who was reviewing them) but it also adds considerable time to the submission process, especially if your app is rejected. This would then result in a longer appeal process unless you make the necessary changes.

Neither gets the win in this round so it remains:

Apple 1 – 3 Android

Market Share

Simple, Apple hold the market share, so they get the win! We are able to reach far more people on the App Store than we can in Android Market. Ask us in a year’s time after the Google branded Android builds momentum, it might be a different story!

Apple 2 – 3 Android

So after all is said and done, this suggests that Android is the better platform to build for. Wrong! They are both of equal marketing value as each other. Each holds a significant weight in the market, and it gives off a better overall brand if you have both of those names attached to your website, application, concept or company. We highly recommend you add some weight to your brand by creating a mobile application and we’d be more than happy to help you out! Not only would you receive our fantastic design and top quality development, you will have all of our CIM Chartered Marketing experience and branding skills on tap as well!

Call us on 01903 824229 or contact us on online to arrange a FREE, no obligation quote or meeting.

Blogging Services from The Brand Surgery

What’s all this blogging about?

We love blogging! It’s the best way, in our opinion, of getting your website noticed and improving search engine optimisation (SEO). Ever since we’ve been blogging, The Brand Surgery appears at the top of Google for ‘Branding Agency Sussex‘ and that’s for the last two years. We disguise our ‘blog‘ as ‘news’. Blogging is also the best way of keeping people coming back for more repeat visits. It’s also a great way to build up a relationship with your customers online.

It’s really simple. All you have to do is think of an interesting story incorporating keywords relevant to your industry, and then perform a little linking magic.

So why don’t you all do it? Perhaps it’s because you don’t have time and everything else seems more important …

That’s where we come in. We arrange a meeting with you to establish who your prospective customers are (because we can do that as we are marketeers too – members of Chartered Institute of Marketing), then we spend time researching your customers and your competitors. When this is done we look at stories relating to your industry and include specific keywords within these stories. Sounds simple? It is when we do it. And it works. All of the customers we create blog posts for are page one in Google for their chosen keywords.

The best part is that blogging is far more affordable than traditional SEO. With our blogging service, you are paying hundreds per month. Not thousands. We charge from £65 (ex VAT) per blog post which includes writing the post, including the keywords and links. All we ask of you is to give us the subject title of the story and the products you want to focus on. We also offer a service where we can create the subjects and even set up a blog facility on your website if you don’t already have one. Call us on 01903 824229 to discuss.

If you haven’t blogged in a while or have never started blogging, it is best to do two a week to kick-start your website presence. So we have created a special offer for first-time bloggers.

SPECIAL OCTOBER NEW CUSTOMER OFFER!!
TWO MONTHS BLOG POSTING FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!

Two blog postings per week @ £65 (ex VAT) per week when you book two months in advance. eg. 4 WEEKS = £260 (ex VAT). 8 WEEKS = £520 (ex VAT). This is a MASSIVE saving of £520 (ex VAT) ONE MONTH FREE! A single blog posting usually costs £65 (ex VAT).

After two months, if you like our service, we will continue to give you a 10% discount off our standard blog posting for the next ten months.

Terms and conditions do apply – we are very fair! We can provide these upon request. We can show you case studies upon request.

Either email us or call us on 01903 824229 to take advantage of our offer.

Terms and Conditions: This offer only applies to new blog posting customers. Blogs length and content does not include industry technical language unless supplied by you. You must follow our advice on legal and copyright matters.

Equity IQ - New website from The Brand Surgery

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.

Terry Winstanley - WOW FACTOR

Terry Winstanley, Jade Richards and eight other contestants from X Factor 2011 are coming to Worthing (Assembly Hall) for one night only (Friday 4th November 2011, 7-10.30pm) to promote their CHILDREN IN NEED SINGLE and sing their most popular songs from the show.

We met with Terry, from Worthing last week, and talked about the success of Worthing Idol 2011. Terry was so impressed, that he asked us to organise this one-off event. We were naturally delighted to accept. As you may know, we have also organised Worthing Idol 2010 and the fantastically successful Broadwater Royal Wedding Picnic which attracted 3000 people and we raised £1500 towards Broadwater Community Association. We are very excited as this is a national event.

We will be using our combination of design and marketing tools to promote THE WOW FACTOR: logo design, graphic design, social media expertise, website design, PR, and our newly acquired Chartered Institute of Marketing qualification.

Tickets are on sale at www.worthingtheatres.org priced at £12.50 each. If you would like further information, please contact the event organiser – US!! – on 07909 693172.  All profits from the show and the single will go to Help For Heroes.

Check out the new website at: http://www.thewowfactor.org.

Go to the Twitter page: WowFactorEvent and the Facebook page: The Wow Factor

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!

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.