Port Orchard: Looking for brand you can trust

t City looking

to create a positive identity that

would fit on a bumper sticker.

Poulsbo offers a Norwegian flavor. Leavenworth provides Bavarian charm. Now, a committee has formed to develop ideas for branding Port Orchard in such a way to attract visitors while giving residents feelings of pride and community spirit.

“We want to come up with an identity for Port Orchard,” said Port Orchard Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Coreen Haydock Johnson. “We want to encourage tourism and capture exactly what we like about the town, express this and get people to feel really good about where they live.”

Johnson presided over the first meeting of the Port Orchard branding committee Tuesday morning.

Several local businesspeople and public employees attended, among them South Kitsap Schools Superintendent David LaRose, Kitsap County Assessor Jim Avery and Port Orchard Mayor Lary Coppola.

Some of the famous successful brands are “Virginia is for lovers” in the 1970s, and the more recent “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

The most notable failure is closer to home, when Washington state paid hefty consultant fees to come up with “Just Say WA.”

It was so roundly panned that it was never used.

So what fits Port Orchard?

A good brand doesn’t require a transformation into another national identity, as Poulsbo, and it doesn’t need to be literal.

Capturing the feeling of the town, improving people’s self-concept and catching visitors’ attention is an ephemeral process.

One possibility, suggested by Coppola, is to position Port Orchard as “Sausalito to Bremerton’s San Francisco.” 

Coppola cited Sausalito’s slogan, “the reason they built the (Golden Gate) Bridge,” as an example of a successful brand.

Part of the mission is to battle Port Orchard’s unfavorable reputation, overcoming the condescension that originates from other parts of the state and county.

Recently, the Kitsap 20/20 report referred to Port Orchard as “Kitsap’s Junk Drawer.”

The new brand needs to be positive, so a version of “No longer a junk drawer” won’t work.

It also needs to be basically true. While a slogan doesn’t need to emphasize local negatives, neither can it absolutely refute them.

“We don’t need to address what’s bad,” Coppola said. “We should address the good, and the bad will take care of itself.”

Still, it is difficult to overcome unfavorable impressions. And the task grows every time a topless coffee stand opens, or someone tries to remove a lug nut with a shotgun blast.

Accordingly, the success of a brand for either the buyer or the seller is perceptual.

“I’m tired of us being second best,” Coppola said. “Bremerton got a new events center. We get the jail. Central Kitsap gets new ballfields. We get the jail. We need to brand ourselves with something that demonstrates pride in the community. We’re not Kitsap’s junk drawer.”

As the city searches for a big-picture brand there are little fixes available. Coppola said that Port Orchard is the only local town without a color logo, and he has directed one of his employees (he owns Wet Apple Publishing) to submit some designs.

“This sounds warm and fuzzy,” Johnson said. “But branding can have a tremendous influence. It captures what makes people connect with Port Orchard, and reflects what people like about the community. In that sense, a brand is a promise.”

Johnson suggested hiring Oregon-based Bill Baker, author of a book titled “Destination Branding for Small Cities,” to conduct a workshop. Aside from this, there were no further action items at the end of Tuesday’s meeting, except scheduling another session in three weeks.

For more information contact Johnson, (360) 876-3505 or office@portorchard.com.

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