being an advertising nerd: take 789

I've been on the website, www.brandtags.net for more time than I would care to admit today. The 5 huge papers I have due in the next two weeks for my online "Gender and Global Politics" class have been pushed aside in the name of browsing what one word people associate with some of the brands they interact with everyday.

According to the website, the basic idea of Brand Tags is that a brand exists entirely in people's heads. Therefore, a brand is whatever they say it is. There's a large database of popular brand names, and in order to see the results of Apple, for example, you have to tag 5 other brands with your one word opinion of them. Genius, as this ensures that the results will keep becoming more and more comprehensive. The overall results for a brand are displayed in a tag cloud with bigger and bolder font, the more popular the answer is.

This is such a simple idea, but I think it's wonderful. A company can spend all the money in the world trying to brand itself, but in the end, a brand is what the consumers think it is. Having to sum up a company or brand in one word gets to the root of consumer thought and there is so, so much interesting insight in the results.

Examples:
American Apparel: boring. cheap. hipster. nothing. porn.

Apple (the darling of the brand world): awesome. creative. cool. expensive. innovative. love.

Barbie: blonde. girl. ken. pink. plastic. slut. stupid. vishnia. whore.

Burger King: cheap. crap. disgusting. fast. greasy. gross. have it your way. (on the bright side, at least their slogan is sticking in people's heads?)

HBO: SEX AND THE CITY. (haha)

Hummer: asshole. blowjob. gas guzzler. stupid. waste.

Starbucks: burnt. corporate. everywhere. mermaid (??). seattle. ubiquitous.

Target (the only company that could maybe give Apple a run for its 'brand darling' title): affordable. awesome. better than walmart. bullseye. cheap. design. everything. fun. hip. love. value.

Wal-Mart: america. big. cheap. china. crap. evil. huge. low prices. redneck. white trash.