Established model
Points of parity and difference
Kevin Lane Keller · 1998
Some attributes get you considered at all; only the rest make anyone choose you.
Its place in the frameworkBrand Core›Brand Positioning
What it does
Points of parity are what the category requires — absent them you are not a candidate, and exceeding them wins nothing. Points of difference are the reasons to prefer you. The common failure is investing in parity attributes and reporting the improvement as differentiation.
- Reach for it when
- When a positioning statement lists advantages that every competitor could also claim.
- Where it stops
- Which attribute is which changes as a category matures. Today’s difference becomes tomorrow’s entry requirement, and the classification has to be redone.
Kevin Lane Keller, Strategic Brand Management, Prentice Hall, 1998.
Why it sits at Brand Positioning
The place the brand occupies in someone else’s mind: which category they file it under, what they think it is better at, and what they would accept it being ordinary at.
A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:
- Frame of referenceRies and Trout’s Positioning (1981), and the category-entry-point work that followed on how buyers actually retrieve options.
- Points of differenceKeller’s points-of-difference and points-of-parity framework within customer-based brand equity.
- The positioning statementThe standard positioning-statement form used across brand practice since the 1980s: target, frame, benefit, reason to believe.
- Brand architectureAaker and Joachimsthaler’s brand relationship spectrum, from branded house through to house of brands.
What it touches elsewhere
Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Brand Positioning lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.
- Business CoreThe value proposition settles what the offer does better; this object settles what the market believes.
- Market CoreFrame and competitor set come from the market analysis, and positioning is what is done with them.
- Brand PerceptionWhether the intended position was actually taken up is a perception measurement.
- Goal CoreA position takes years to hold, which makes it a long term goal rather than a campaign.
Filed at the same place
These answer questions that arise at Brand Positioning too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.
- PositioningPositioning happens in the mind of the audience, not in the product, and the mind has very little room.
Elsewhere in Brand Core
These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.
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