The distinguishing characteristics of your brand: the brand driver model

Absolutely, standing out and excelling in a specific area doesn’t guarantee success on its own. Every brand aims to carve out its unique space in the market, not just in the market but also in the minds of consumers. Successful brands are associated with something that makes them unique in their market. This distinctiveness is a key factor in brand positioning and attracting consumers who resonate with the brand’s values, offerings, and identity. It’s about creating a strong and memorable brand that sets you apart from the competition and connects with your target audience.

The Brand Driver Model by McKinsey is a useful tool for identifying the distinguishing features that make your brand unique in the market. The model looks like this:

The Brand Driver Model

How can this model assist you in developing your brand identity? The first step is to put down on paper everything your brand has to offer. What can you tell the market about your brand? Make a list and place these words in the quadrants of the model.

Antes
This quadrant contains the features that are important to your customers but with which you cannot possibly distinguish yourself in the market. The market expects your brand to have these features. An example of this is fast delivery when starting an online store. In 2018, this was a minimum requirement for an online store.

Drivers
This is the most important quadrant. It includes the features of your brand that are important to the target audience and with which you can distinguish yourself from your competitors. These are the Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) of your brand that only you can offer. Your brand identity should be based on these characteristics.

Distinctions
This quadrant contains features that are distinctive from the competition but not relevant to the customer. This quadrant is related to the earlier mentioned market research. Innovative communication efforts in an extremely conservative market are irrelevant and won’t bring you customers. You will stand out negatively compared to other providers because customers simply want to have a familiar and ‘secure’ feeling when making a purchase.

Neutrals
Neutrals are characteristics that are neither distinctive nor relevant to your customer. These characteristics are so generic that they have lost all meaningfulness.

Using this model, you can truly work on your brand identity. Describe how you can translate the distinctive features into visual and text elements. If you want to know what components make up your brand identity and how to shape them, take a look at our brand identity page.