Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

They're both tags attributed to Disney on the Brand Tags site...  Ed Cotton (of InfluxInsights.com) posted on this inquiry into brand impressions.  Noah Brier, a strategist with Naked Communications, has taken advantage of the collaborative nature of tagging to embark on "a collective experiment in brand perception." At Brand Tags, visitors are presented with a brand and an input box where they can tag the brand with the first thing that pops into their head.  When you've done a few, check out the full list of brands, each with its tag cloud of first impressions. 

Now obviously this isn't a rigorous brand perception methodology, but it is an interesting idea.  For most of the large brands, the biggest tags are the ones you'd expect.  Evil, crap, boring, and the like were common.  (Disney even got 'evil' at a fairly high volume, though it was overshadowed by cartoons, children, kids, fun and of course Mickey Mouse - overall a pretty good branding story there...)

The more interesting results were the smaller tags; "Leash" in the BlackBerry list, "Olympic Rings" for Audi, "Coffee" for Guiness.  Apple shows up as a tag for other brands like Dyson and Flickr.  Brand names come up more strongly for some companies than others.

On its own, it's simply an interesting experiment.  But I could see this approach being useful as part of a larger research approach.  It seems like a great way to get some initial, quick, directional feedback that could provide some insights to drive deeper research.  Start with a brand tag question in a survey, follow up with ongoing dialog.  Compare perceptions of different segments, at different life-cycles or against competitive brands.  Get an informal read on employee perceptions.

As companies come to grips that they aren't in control of the brand and they become increasingly transparent, increasingly conversational, this kind of exercise might even start to show up on a company's home page... Who are we? You tell us.

And who is Wendell?

David Lewis