The distinguishing characteristics of your brand: the brand driver model

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.