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The best commercial for any business is word of mouth. It sounds so simple and yet, it's not an easy thing to accomplish. It does not happen of it's own accord. It's more like putting a puzzle together one piece at a time. You know what the completed picture will look like, but every single piece has to correctly fit or it just doesn't work.
I am not down playing any type of commercial advertising. Every form of advertising has it's functions and corresponding benefits, but word of mouth, customer to customer, that's what every advertising scheme strives for.

Word of mouth advertising can work against a business as effectively as it can be positive. A case in point: In 1969 I bought a car. It was the first new car I was able to purchase. I was so proud of it. The deal was made and I drove off the lot with my shiny new car, a Renault Hatch-Back. Ever hear of it? I may be the reason you haven't seen hundreds of them on the highways.
As I drove away from the car lot the odometer registered 3 miles. At seven miles, before I got to my house, the engine quit. The dealer sent a wrecker and kept the car for six weeks. To make a very long, sad story short, the car was a lemon and the dealer wouldn't fix it. I refused to pay for it and it ruined my credit. I was not happy and felt that the dealership and the Renault company had screwed me over. There was nothing I could do except- run my mouth. Believe me, I did. I decided that I would tell ten thousand people about my experience. Every time I told someone this tale, I made a check mark in a note pad that I carried everywhere.
Did it work? I don't know. Eventually, I got tired of talking about it and the last time I counted, I had only told 2753 people. Did I cause the company to lose any business? I have no idea, but it made me feel better and it could not have helped them. I've always wondered how many of the people I told that story too passed it on to someone else. No telling. But, that dealership went out of business a few months later and I've not seem a Renault Hatch-Back ever.
Word of mouth advertising is usually the result of excellent customer service. Nothing beats exceeding the customer's expectation. Most customers expect a reasonable amount of customer service, like having an advertised item in stock, having good quality merchandise at a fair price, having knowledgeable sales personal when you need to ask a question, clean rest rooms, un-cluttered aisles and a quick, accurate check out when you are ready to go. A store can have all of this and still have a customer leave the store "pissed off".
Why? They expect to be treated in a friendly manner and if the last person they deal with in the store is a slouchy, surly checker who is not friendly or they've had to wait too long in the check out line, they are not happy and they will talk.
Why a company will put the least trained, the lowest paid people in the store on the front, I'll never know. It doesn't always generate the kind of word of mouth advertising one would desire to improve business.

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