During nearly 30 years creating advertising for some of America’s largest brands, we routinely produced television commercials costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and then watched them go on the air pushed by millions of dollars of media advertising.

With enough media money, a brand can be created as quickly as you can say ‘Super Bowl.’ Television advertising is a powerful and persuasive branding tool and the Nike swoosh logo, the target for Target Stores, the distinctive green Starbuck logo, and especially the golden arches, are testimony to how deeply television advertising has instilled these brands into our culture and into our consciousness.

Creating a brand name is one thing. Maintaining and growing it is another. It’s not enough to buy a flight of radio and television commercials and declare victory. Measuring the awareness of advertising is one thing; measuring customer loyalty is another.

You walk into your favorite store in Kitsap with a sense of…expectation.

You expect this trip to be pleasant where you will be greeted by name, a ready smile, where you will locate what you want at a price that works for you. You are a loyal customer and you tell your friends and they become customers. Word spreads.

When that happens time after time, customer after customer, with never a hiccup permitted, you build your brand name.

Make no mistake: brand names are not sustained by advertising. They are built on the highest levels of customer service backed the best inventory, selection and price.

If you want a complicated solution to the question of “branding” you can find dozens of books offering hundreds of branding programs.

But if you are a small business owner in Kitsap County, your brand is built every single day with every single customer and because you know that 80 percent of new business comes from word of mouth, customer service is the essence of your brand name.

Positive word of mouth is the most powerful branding tool made.

In marketing terms, the category winners are those with the most top of mind awareness and they become brand names.

So when someone asks you for the name of a dry cleaner in Silverdale, a CPA on Bainbridge, a plumber in Poulsbo, Thai food in South Kitsap, one name for each comes to mind and you are happy to recommend them to others, secure they will find what you’ve promised.

These businesses have won your awareness, earned your trust and are your “brand names.”

How did they accomplish that?

When I go into ‘my’ dry cleaners in Silverdale, I am greeted by name, my order is always ready, there is a bowl of candy on the counter and I have never had to wait more than a few minutes to be served. If I am dropping off an order, I know I can leave it on the counter and it will be handled perfectly.

And if I ever had any doubts about this business, one afternoon when I was picking up an order the owner handed me an envelope and mentioned they had found something left in one of my shirt pockets. When I got to my car and opened the envelope, I found two one-dollar bills.

If service gets any better than this, I’ll be there. But I am a loyal customer of Ultra Custom Cleaners and I am happy to recommend them.

Aside from their store sign, I am not aware of any advertising, promotions, no store window signs announcing a sale, not even a website. They have built this brand the only way you can ‘brand’ a business, one customer at a time.

Does it surprise you that Nordstrom has no fancy logo — just their store name in a distinctive logotype — they are not a major television or newspaper advertiser.

They do not have a jingle to sing, a theme line to remember. They have two sales a year, do no discounting and they continue to be category leaders.

Their customer service is the heart of their brand and they know what happens to the customer experience is vastly more important than what they might promise in a television commercial.

Clients sometimes look at me quizzically when I deflect questions about advertising and branding and, instead, ask about sales and customer service.

But I know in my heart that to build a successful brand name, across the county or in Kitsap County, customer service must always come first. That’s branding the common sense way.

Brand name considerations based on 5,000 business consultations

• Be sure you have a niche and maintain your point of product and service differences. What makes your business special?
• Everyone who works for you, part time to full time, needs to understand and religiously practice your customers service standards every single time.
• What are you doing to reward customers, to build brand loyalty?
• How do you communicate with your customers?
• How do you attract new customers?
• What is the one place you advertise consistently?
• Social media, websites, may have a place, so don’t say ‘no’ too quickly
• Great customer service wins every time!