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BlackBar: Capitalize on Brand Relationships

Brand Relationships, the basis of a strong customer franchise and market value, are not created by a brand monologue directed at consumers. Consumers have a voice too and it is much louder in the expanding digital world. Brand Relationships result from consumers’ dialogue with the brand. Manage both sides of this conversation – consumers’ perceptions and their projections of the brand’s perceptions – to fully capitalize your brand’s worth. Only via Brand Relationship dialogue can brands now thrive in today’s ever more “consumercratic” world.

Focus the Power of Brand Relationships on all your Marketing Objectives

Identify and strengthen the right Brand Relationships to impact brand communication, acquisition, retention, loyalty, pricing power, social brand behavior including consumers’ own communication about brands


Our Multidisciplinary Approach Maximizes the Impact of Brand Relationships on Macro Marketing

We identify relevant relationships using our expertise in economic, demand theory pricing behavior, finance, psychology, cross cultural values, communication planning, advanced research, high level analytics and modeling and new modes of marketing


Advising for Better Solutions

We are better advisors because of careers spent listening, questioning, analyzing to find better solutions. We know how to gently remove barriers and integrate new knowledge into organizations. We energize as opposed to disrupt work groups

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Five Universal Brand Relationships

  • Self-Differentiation

    J&J and WalMart epitomize the customer experience of feeling at the center of attention, but their product offering is not  differentiated from competitors’. The uniqueness of Amazon – and the way its offering feels customized – makes the customer feel different.        

  • Identification

    Brands most identified with are Amazon, Google and WalMart.  Apple and J&J are well-loved brands, but are not experienced as a means of self-expression to the extent of the former. Facebook is a means of self-expression – but not as well loved.  

  • Reinforcement

    Top reinforcement brands are Pantene, L’Oreal, J&J, Amazon and Google. While both components of the relationship are important, hair care brands do it more by enhancing self-esteem.    

  • Role Model

    Many corporate brands – like GE, 3M, Facebook and Amazon  - are seen as leaders and innovators, but only Apple and Google manage to combine those perceptions with that key personal  experience of feeling both challenged and encouraged by the brand.      

  • Playful

    Brands from several very different categories are seen as relaxed and stylish, but the most successful casual dining brands – together with YouTube and Amazon – are the ones which just seem to give pleasure, without requiring anything in return.    
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Driving BlackBar

Juan Pablo Carrero

Juan Pablo Carrero has developed an extensive career in the areas of market research, advertising and branding. His professional experience has evolved both in private companies and in consulting and advertising agencies. For more than 15 years his focus has been the world of brands. Juan Pablo Carrero heads up the BlackBar Think Tank which provides insights into brand relationships in Latin America.

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Ed Lebar

A 40 year veteran of marketing, Ed Lebar launched BlackbarConsulting with Max Blackston. Their focus is building consumer brand relationships. Their analytic models and creativity stress building customer franchises, improving pricing power and raising market valuation multiples. The foundation is working both parts of Consumer brand relationships: brand attributes and brand experiences.

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Max Blackston

Max is a brand strategist, market researcher and consumer psychologist with a long track record of innovation in the consumer sciences. He was one of the first in the field to successfully operationalize models of consumers’ decision processes, and it was Max who first conceptualized a theory of Consumer Brand Relationships more than 25 years ago.

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