“What is a brand?”

During the 2014 TLMI Annual Meeting at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Hotel in Dana Point, CA, Rick Barrera posed this question to the more than 400 label industry converters and suppliers in attendance. Barrera is a speaker, marketing consultant and the author of Overpromise and Overdeliver: The Secrets to Unshakeable Customer Loyalty.

He gave his brand definition: “First and foremost, brand is a word in the mind. It’s a promise of consistency, it’s your reputation,” he said.

With this year’s Annual Meeting themed “Growing Your Revenue with Powerful Marketing and Branding,” Barrera called upon label companies to heed his advice and “Overpromise,” urging businesses to develop “powerful, differentiated brand promises that separate you from everybody else out there that you compete with.”

Branding is critical, he said, because a label converter’s products represent major brands that care deeply about branding. “Each of you has a uniqueness that must be made clear to potential customers in order to differentiate from the pack,” he added.

Barrera emphasized the importance of owning a word in the customer’s mind.” For example, in the automotive space, Volvo is automatically associated with “safety,” while BMW owns “performance.”

“When you strip away every asset of a company, everything except the logo and the name, that’s a brand’s equity,” Barrera explained. He then reported some striking figures attached to the logos of some of the world’s top brands: Starbucks = $4.4 billion; Heinz = $7.6 billion; Budweiser = $12.6 billion; Nike $17.4 billion; and Apple = a whopping $98.3 billion.

When it comes to growing a brand today, Barrera suggests companies should be focusing on the Millennial demographic. “In five years, Millennials will be the largest group of consumers, accounting for over 30% of consumer spending,” he said. “They’re willing to pay more to be the first to get an item, and they want to interact with and have input into the products they will buy.”

Barrera pointed out that the most successful companies are masters of what he calls “TouchPoint Branding” – the art of making sure that every point of contact between a company and its customers is well-executed and fulfills an over-the-top brand promise. Without that promise, he said, you won’t get the attention in a competitive marketplace. “And once you’ve done that, you need to overdeliver,” he said. “Align your products so that they fulfill the brand promise, and your systems so that they fulfill the brand promise. Your employees – your people – have to be taught how to fulfill, reflect and amplify the promise. Customers then get excited by it, they become advocates of your company, and they tell other people about it.”

Regarding employees, in particular Barrera talked about salespeople, and the difference between “surface” selling and “deep” selling. Surface selling, he explained, involves talking, pitching and demonstrating, and it puts a brand at a competitive risk. Deep selling, on the other hand, is characterized by inquiry and deep listening, and can result in changing the way your customers think, while reducing competitive risk. “Salespeople should be seeking values and feeling goals, but instead they’re looking for facts – what do you need, when do you need it,” he said.


In branding, Barrera stressed the importance of consistency. “A confused mind does not buy,” he concluded. “Be consistent throughout the customer experience. Everything you do should be instantly recognizable as yours.”