A collective experiment in brand perception.

Lately, philsblogging has spent quite some time dealing with brands and how we interact with them. If you haven’t read Where We Encounter Brands by now, this is now highly recommended. As a follow-up story (there are more to come, that’s what I can say for now), I point at a research program that describes the offered service with the following words - and I quote now:  ”A collective experiment in brand perception.” Brandtags.net digs deep in our (collective) minds to answer one question. What associations is the public reflection of world brands made of?

This is what a flickr search for “collective brand” results in · Ever wondered what the public reflection of the Coke brand looks like? · photo by Ende

The essentials for this research page: Ask the consumers, who are supposed to decide ever since the idea of a free market in neoliberalistic times came up, how they perceive a certain product. The research is done with a common research method of giving the consumer a logo of a brand* (we hopefully know that brand doesn’t equal logo… right? Weary about the definition? See the end of the post.) and tracking down their one-word associations connected with the brand.

They mostly use logos for the evocation. I’d be interesting to test that on sounds, smells (is that possible on the internet? Big question mark there!) and impressions given by other senses such as the sense of touch for instance. I’m sure there are programs on this out there. Once I find useful information on that, I’ll post this here on philsblogging.com!

The basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people’s heads. Therefore, whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is. 940,000+ tags and counting.

I really like their definition of what brandtags.net is all about. One tip: Don’t hesitate. Take the first association and submit it since the first association probably gets close to what your subconsciousness dictates you when you’re shopping for groceries (what milk are you likely to pick? What color does the brand have, what size, what design? This must be information CEOs are striving for…

Here is a list of brands and their associations I was nosy about.

• Amazon
• Boing
• British Airways - in particular: Terminal 5 (cough cough), posh (am I?) and London (well, thank you captain obvious)
• Converse - in particular: chucks, all star, emo, hipster (what is a hipster?)
• Dr Pepper - in particular: splits the nations. Yuck and Yummie are equally sized.
• Guinness - in particular: the surprising big-weighted bear suggests that spelling and huge amounts of beer don’t go together well.
• Google - in particular: Big Brother, evil, brilliant and monopoly
• Motorola
• Nike - in particular: Just Do It - I think this is the #1 brand of all modern times. Here an additional post on What is the most famous logo of all times by Darren Alawi.
• Preppy Tommy Hilfiger 
• Twitter - in particular: down, waste of time, pointless, addictive, web 2.0 - well, that most definitely is subjective.
• Whiskas- in particular: and not so particular at the same time: cat.
• YMCA - in particular: Village People among others.

Apart from recommending doing some associations, I suggest browsing the brand archive. The bigger the font size, the more submissions… Figures.

Final Call For Definition: Brand

* A brand is a collection of images and ideas representing an economic producer; [...] it refers to the concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme. Brand recognition and other reactions are created by the accumulation of experiences [...] through the influence of advertising, design, and media commentary. A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to acompany, product or service. A brand serves to create associations andexpectations [...] A brand often includes an explicit logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols, sound which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality.

See more in Wikipedia’s entry for “Brand.”

Slightly off-topic. The image used in this blog entry also makes a great wallpaper. Jump to the flickr hosting page.