Worthing Idol takes place at Worthing Lido on Bank Holiday Monday 30th August 2010 between 12 noon and 3.30pm. It has already been pointed out that Lido is an anagram of Idol – so the location was obviously meant to be. We are all doing a ’sun dance’ in the office so that the weather is nice to us on Monday.

The line-up for Worthing Idol 2010 is amazing. You can click here to see it. Simon Cowell would be most envious if he saw the show – it is official – Worthing has definitely got talent!

Here is a movie clip of round 2 of the Worthing Idol auditions.

The Brand Surgery team have played a major role in the preparation of this event.

• Logo design and branding
• Website design and development
• Blogging and Facebooking campaigns
• T-shirt and banner design
• Marketing collateral
• Press releases and all PR
• Event planning

Richy Moss graduating at Sussex University

Meet Richy. Our clever, but non-geeky web developer. Richy joined our branding agency a few weeks ago. As you can see he recently graduated and is sporting a Computer Science BSc certificate in the photo above. Richy lives in Worthing, and when he is not working, he loves playing football at County level for Worthing United.

Naturally, we grilled Richy to find out his loves and hates, and here are his replies:

VV: So Richy, when you’re not working on websites or playing football, what do you like to do?
RM: Going to gigs – The last one we went to was Greendays.

VV: What kind of music do you like?
RM: I love anything really. Rock. Anything. Eclectic I suppose.

VV: So what is your food?
RM: Roast Lamb and mint sauce. Yummmmmmmm.

VV: So what is this Computer Science degree all about?
RM: I was on a cutting-edge course at the University of Sussex which was rated in the top 15 of UK universities for the quality and volume of our research in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). UoS taught us core skills such as Java programming and teamwork, SQL and relational database management, as well as professional issues and career development, with a focus on employability.

VV: So what will you bring to our customers?
RM: Fresh ideas, innovative approach – although I know you have oodles of that already. My work will compliment your award-winning branding agency.
VV: Oooh. Richy. Keep it coming!!

VV: Do you have any bug bears?
RM: Yes, bad functionality makes my blood boil. I hate it when things don’t make sense – like when you click somewhere on a website and what you expect to happen just doesn’t happen! Usability is key to website success. I am not a lover of flash websites and I detest seeing frames.

VV: What is your favourite website?
RM: The BBC site is excellent. I love the polished design and good functionality. It is very easy to use.

VV: While researching for this blog, Richie, look at these awful websites we spotted! They need help!
• http://havenworks.com/people/a-z/b/biden-joseph-robinette-jr/
• http://yvettesbridalformal.com
RM: Yuk. They are vile! They should come with a health warning – could seriously damage your eyesight. Are these for real?

VV: So what about website design then? Funky backgrounds seem to be fashionable right now. Do you think it will last?
RM: Yes probably because screens are getting larger all the time, so now there is more room for visual impact.

VV: Any last words?
RM: All the website development projects I work on are naturally W3C standard compliant, paying special attention to semantic mark-up to ensure our customers websites make more sales.

VV: Welcome to our team Richy!

Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression. The Brand Surgery’s speciality is branding websites combined with good functionality. So if your website is letting you down, don’t fear. Call us on 01903 824229 to have a no-obligation chat about your website. The Brand Surgery, branding agency in West Sussex serves Brighton, Portslade, Shoreham, Worthing, Littlehampton, Arundel, Chichester, Portsmouth, Horsham, Crawley and the Gatwick Diamond area.

ILM NVQ Level 3 for The Brand Surgery

The Brand Surgery, branding agency in West Sussex, have been swotting up on a Train to Gain course, supplied by Northbrook College, to bring our customers an even smoother and seamless service. Brand promise and customer care are our priority, and in future, our improved back-end office system for producing logo design, web design and development, brochure design, exhibition design and so on, will be even slicker, as we have put improved systems in place as part of our training. At The Brand Surgery, we invest in our staff, so that they are continually learning, which is stimulating them, and maintaining interest. Everyone is happy!

What courses are we on?

The boss, Vicky Vaughan, is working towards The Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM), NVQ level 3  Management qualification which is broadly equivalent to a GCE A Level. This will be her second NVQ Level 3 course, after she passed the Business Setup course in 2005 with a distinction.

The NVQ in Management (NQF Level 3) has been specially designed for first line managers with responsibility for: managing budgets, allocating work to team members/colleagues/contractors, achieving specific results and for some decision making. The qualification aims to give participants an opportunity to develop their management performance, become more effective and to progress their career. Vicky is taking four mandatory units (which look at managing resources, heath and safety, leadership, and allocating/monitoring work) plus three optional units.

Jody, our creative goddess, is on the OCR Business Administration course, level 2. This qualification provides evidence of competence of being in a supporting role in an office environment. Optional units provide opportunity to show understanding and skills in a variety of areas, including basic finance, IT and contributing to events.

We would like to thank Northbrook College for working with us, in between us rebranding businesses to make them beautiful and increase their sales!

Call us on 01903 824229 if you think we can help your business grow.

The Brand Surgery training with OCR

The magicman rebrand included new logo, brochure, website and livery.

We are very proud of our latest achievement – the magicman® rebrand!

Way back last year we created a stunning new look for magicman®. Our brief was that they wanted to move the company onto the bigger things, and hence they required a new corporate look. The brief including a new logo, brochure, website and livery, plus signage for their new executive offices.

We created the magicman® logo in a variety of formats, all which can be used in various mediums eg. for press advertising (black and white version of logo), white logo for placing on dark backgrounds, blue logo for placing on white backgrounds. The accent colours are a warm lime green and stone colour. This client didn’t require a branding toolbox, however branding toolboxes are part of our platinum brand consultation service and are excellent to send out if you are having adverts designed, or to promotional product companies.

You will see we kept the dark blue for the rebrand, plus we kept the ’star’ as the ‘dot’ on the ‘i’ of magicman® – just a tadge more tasteful.

The new magicman® logo, just like The Brand Surgery logo, is a registered trademark and we recommend that if you want your company to ‘go large’ you should also do the same.

We are now well on the way with the website, and hope that before long we will be blogging about another magic success.

Branding tips

We always recommend that a business rebrands every four to five years as fashions change and old logos look stale. It needn’t be a total evolution. Perhaps just a simple font or shape modification will do in many cases. In my new book, DO A MADONNA!™, I show you some of the larger companies that have successfully rebranded – and in some cases the change is minimal. It is important that when you rebrand, you are still attractive and recognisable to your target audience. CONFUSION = MISTRUST. If you want customers to invest in your services, you must gain their trust and loyalty.

In case you are new to our blogs, you may not know that that we do have a new online brochure service if you are worried about the cost of print – a rebrand need not cost the earth.

Call Vicky at The Brand Surgery, branding agency serving Brighton, Arundel, Chichester, Crawley Horsham, Littlehampton, Worthing, and the rest of West Sussex on 01903 824229.

Happy branding!

Magicman rebrand included logo, brochure, website, livery, signage, uniforms

Worthing Idol 2010Worthing Idol 2010 - Only 36 places available.

A brand new talent show in the style of Britain’s Got Talent is coming to Worthing soon! Talent Within You are launching Worthing Idol 2010 which takes place on August Bank Holiday, 30th August 2010 in South Street, Worthing (just down the steps from the Guildbourne Centre).

Talent Within You helps children and young adults to develop their talent and to take it to the next level by raising funds from local businesses. You may remember Jack Ford, Olympic hopeful who with the help of Talent Within You, danced with Todd Carty on Worthing’s annual ice rink in January. Worthing Town Centre Initiative have kindly funded Worthing Idol 2010 which takes place from 12pm to 3pm, with prize-giving from 3.30pm.

This talent competition is open to anybody up to the age of 18. Talents can range from singing, dancing, magic, comedy. Anything that will entertain the audience! All contestants will receive a Worthing Idol 2010 medal, and the main winner will receive £250 towards taking their talent to the next level. Terms and conditions do apply to the prize money.

HURRY UP AND ENTER! THE POSTERS HAVE ONLY BEEN UP FOR FIVE DAYS AND WE HAVE HAD LOTS OF ENTRIES.

The judges are three well-known local Wor-lebrities: No Simon Cowell to be seen anywhere!

• Tim Loughton MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families
• Amelia Regnante, Regnante School of Performing Arts
• Andy Sparsis, Proto Restaurant Group

Contestants need to book soon as there are on 36 places available. The stage is covered in case of bad weather, and will be 12’ x 16’, so small groups are allowed.

Download an application form from the website: www.talentwithinyou.org.uk.

Talent Within You is the idea of Vicky Vaughan who wanted to reduce street crime and violence by giving kids a purpose in life. The Brand Surgery has designed the logo, the website and all the promotional material for Talent Within You. We have also worked on all the PR. We are working hard to make Talent Within You a registered charity and we need £5000 in total to do this. Once we are a charity, we can apply for grants and help more children develop their talent. Please help us by fundraising, so we can help more children and make the streets of Britain a safer place to live, work and play.

We've been shortlisted for The Southern Business Awards

It’s award time again! We’ve been shortlisted for the Southern Business Awards in the Small Business category which takes place at The Grand Hotel in Brighton on 3rd September 2010. We have some stiff competition as we are up against Denton Motors in Worthing, Newhaven Enterprise Centre, Shopper Anonymous, St Leonards-on-Sea and Cake Box in Hastings.

We are proud to of been shortlisted, and wish the best of British to all the companies that have also been shortlisted, particularly our client Proto Restaurant Group who are shortlisted for Employer of the Year.

You may remember that last year we were awarded the Business Marketing and Promotion Award 2010 in the Worthing Business Awards. We are very proud of our achievement and put it down to our ethos in business which is:

The Brand Surgery believes in the principle of ‘givers gain’. We give branding advice and give help to businesses by offering high-end branding services at realistic prices. Our tried and tested formula to marketing is ‘HONESTY’ and ‘HELPING OTHERS’. We help businesses and we put ourselves in their shoes. We believe that using honesty when helping our clients with their marketing and promotions is the way forward.

Clients we have helped are so pleased with our expertise that they have passed our name to other businesses that also want to grow. We have advised all of our clients that good branding, marketing and promotions are the key to standing out, especially when the economy is tough. Customers are going to buy from businesses that look professional and established. The customers that have taken our branding advice have thrived throughout the recession.

Everything we advise our clients to do we test on our business first – from website design, to logo design, to customer care to the envelopes we post our marketing packs in. ‘Give’ as you would like to ‘receive’ is our motto for helping businesses to grow.

If you like our business philosophy, then we would love to work with you.

Visit our website www.thebrandsurgery.co.uk or call 01903 824229.

Question: What have garden decking and Eddie Izzard got in common?

Answer: Decking is tough and durable, just like Eddie Izzard it seems. If you didn’t know this, Eddie Izzard celebrated completing 43 marathons in 52 days! Wow. Eddie raised over £200,000 for Sports Relief. Read the rest of this blog by clicking here.

What is the relevance of this Q&A? Our client wanted us to mention Eddie’s amazing triumph and said if we could link this story successfully, then we were truly amazing!

______________________________________________

So, if you’re having a problem thinking of something to blog about, you know who to call …

Vicky Vaughan, managing director of The Brand Surgery has just published her book, DO A MADONNA!™, and it seems her writing talent is perfect for blogging. So if you are thinking about having a new website, apart from it having an excellent brand image and logo, you will want your shop to be found after all that hard work. Therefore, give us a call on 01903 824229 or email vicky@thebrandsurgery.co.uk to add a blog to your existing website. We can brand it up to look exactly like your current website.

Proto Promotions Team jackets designed by The Brand Surgery. Photography by Studio IV.

It’s official! The Brand Surgery are now designing clothes and teamwear!

Our client, Proto Restaurant Group commissioned us to design some jackets recently. The design brief was: Proto Restaurant Group wanted a Formula One feel for some corporate team wear for their promotions team. The jackets would be worn at events such as the Splash FM Awards 2010, and other sponsored events. They asked us to brand the jackets with their logos and awards. We also designed some hats, t-shirts and chocolate boxes. We are very proud of this latest extension to our design services.

You can read about the Proto promotions team on their website blog, which we also design, develop and write. Click here to read more about the Proto promotions team and to read our blog writing.

When you have a logo designed, why not advantage of promoting your brand. We produce a number promotional products. Do you remember our Beat the Recession, Make an Impression packs? If not, click here to read about them.

If you have a logo that simply needs refreshing, this can easily been done, without breaking the bank. Call Vicky on 01903 824229.

We all know that in marketing we should use the KISS method – Keep It Simple Stupid! or Keep it Simple & Straightforward is the more polite version. We have applied this theory to our new Mission Statement which is:

The Brand Surgery brings branding excellence at affordable prices to all businesses in Great Britain.

You can’t get much clearer than that! We bring the same jargon free business ethics to all of our services. If this is the first time you have discovered our blog, here is a little more about The Brand Surgery.

The Brand Surgery is a branding agency and offers services such as: Branding consultancy, logo design, design for print, website design & development, PR services, e-marketing services, blog writing services, copywriting services, photography, Illustration and SMS marketing
The Brand Surgery believes in the principle of Givers Gain. We give branding advice and give help to businesses by offering high-end branding services at realistic prices. Our tried-and-tested formula to marketing is HONESTY and HELPING OTHERS. We help businesses and we put ourselves in their shoes. We believe that using honesty when helping our clients with their marketing and promotions is the way forward.

Clients we have helped are so pleased with our expertise that they have passed our name to other businesses that also want to grow. We have advised all of our clients that good branding, marketing and promotions is the key to standing out, especially when the economy is tough. Customers are going to buy from businesses that look professional and established. The customers that have taken our branding advice have thrived throughout the recession.

Everything we advise our clients to do, we test on our business first – from customer care to the envelopes we post our marketing packs in. Give as you would like to receive is our motto for helping businesses to grow.

If you like our business philosophy, then we would love to work with you. Visit our website on www.thebrandsurgery.co.uk or call 01903 824229. We hope you enjoy looking at the rest of our website.

Viking passengers experience 39 hours delay

I don’t know … I’ve been gone for two weeks and the blogging has just stopped. Luckily I came back when I did …

It is actually a major miracle that I made it back after my Egyptian adventures. Drift snorkelling isn’t for Vicky Vaughan. Especially when one’s face mask doesn’t fit. And double-especially when one is extremely short-sighted. Treble-especially when there are twenty identical looking boats which are 200 metres apart, with a strong current and you can’t remember the name of your boat. I have to say that my drift-snorkelling experience was pretty scary, and I am not sure if I still want to swim the channel to raise funds for my charity, Talent within You next year.

Bad Branding Experience

The swimming was just one adventure! The second was my delay coming home. We were delayed by 39 hours and 40 minutes no thanks to Viking Airlines. The worst part about our delay was that Viking couldn’t be bothered to communicate with its 200 passengers in person. They faxed a letter to Sharm airport to tell us the plane had been cancelled. I was travelling alone and if I hadn’t been so well travelled, would have been very frightened. To Viking’s credit, they did provide accommodation for two evenings. If they had of been honest and said we would be staying another two nights, we could of relaxed. Instead, they had us check-in and check-out of the hotel three times. We had four departure times conveyed to us via an Egyptian rep with pigeon English.

The above experience has left me with a bad memory and is what I call BAD branding! Viking should be sitting on the naughty step for a long time. They have broken their brand promise which is (according to their website): Our experienced team has a philosophy of excellent customer service to ensure your flight experience is exemplary.We look forward to being of service to you! LOL!

The last bad experience was with Breo watches. I purchased a Breo Roam watch on the outbound Viking flight, and it was supposed to be water resistant to 10m. Well trust me, Breo watches  are not water resistant. And what’s more, they will not give me my money back because I have no receipt, thanks to Viking Airlines! Answer from Breo to my request for a replacement or refund: Apologies for the experience with the watch. Unfortunately, In accordance with our Returns Policy (http://www.breo.com/customerservices.php) “Returns and exchanges will only be processed if accompanied with proof of purchase. This includes all airline purchases and items bought through resellers”. What an utterly useless response when Viking couldn’t even send a plane to take me home so I could get a receipt!

Good branding experience

Good branding though is the service I received from HSBC holiday insurance, which comes free with HSBC banking. They refunded £25 per 12 hours (OK a bit stingy I know), but they did it by BACs on the phone. It was so easy. Thank you.

So after all of this, I did have a great holiday. We stayed at Three Corners St. George in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The weather was gorgeous. I had great company with my friends who I met at the hotel. I would go to Sharm El Sheikh again – it’s great to be able to trust the weather in March.

While I’ve been away sunning myself, my brand doctors and nurses have been busy working on three websites, brochures, rebrands and adverts. We are also writing a number of press releases for businesses on a national level. Plus the long awaited book, is back from the proof reader, and we are just about to send it to the publisher.  Go to www.doamadonna.com for a sneak preview! Watch this space!

Call Vicky at The Brand Surgery (best branding company in West Sussex) on 01903 824229 or email vicky@thebrandsurgery.co.uk if you would like to give your business some urgent branding medical attention.