brand tags

Hi everyone, just wanted to give a little brand tags update since it’s been awhile. Since we last spoke the site has amassed 1.3 million tags, so if you haven’t been for a while, it’s probably worth a visit. I’ve personally been quite busy, but managed to add a few features to the site that I figured I’d share.

BATTLE MODE
This came out a while ago and is really shaping up quite nicely. The idea is simple: Two random brands enter the ring, one leaves. You chose the winner. No rules. When I first showed it to a few folks they said it would never work, that they couldn’t compare between categories, however, a quick look at the leaderboard shows that the top brands are, well, the top brands.

AVERAGE AGE
34.4
I was digging around in the database tonight and looking at the registered users. One of the non-required questions is age and over 1,000 people had answered it. Anyway, I quickly ran the data, eliminating a few outliers (I think someone said they were 9 million years old, which seems unlikely) and ended up with 34.35 (which I rounded up to 34.4). Interesting, David, a felllow twitterer, was quick to point out that it’s not far from the national average. (Oh, and that’s mean average.)

OS Browse
This is a bit of an experimental feature, but I figured I’d put it out there and see if people liked it. Basically it shows tags only from people on PCs or Macs. For most brand this data isn’t all that telling, but for someone like Apple it’s pretty amusing (turns out way more people who use PCs think Apple’s pretentious than people who use Macs).

Brazil + UK + Hispanic
brand tags brazil
brand tags uk
brand tags hispanic
I recently launched a Brazilian version with the support of some people down there. Also, if you’re UK, you might want to check that out. Finally, if you’re a Spanish speaking American, give Hispanic tags a whirl.

Okay, think that’s it for now. As always, if you have any feedback send it my way or if you want to see more brands on there, please just submit them.

Thanks again everyone. This experiment has been amazing.

Best regards,
Noah

Interesting entry from Sequence Blog that points out despite the fact that Chipotle’s number 3 tag is Mcdonalds even though the two companies split ways in 2006 (as a side note the Chipotle website is a bit of a nightmare).

Nice post over at elle michelle with some little tidbits she found interesting. My favorite: “People don’t seem to understand the difference between Bobbi Brown (cosmetics) and Bobby Brown (crack).”

After reading this Time’s article about Lance Armstrong’s personal life effecting people’s perception of Livestrong, I decided to add the logo.

This was the line that got me: “Ask Larry Wallach what is the first thing that pops to mind when he hears Mr. Armstrong’s name, and Mr. Wallach, a salesman at Sid’s Bikes on West 19th Street in Manhattan, replies, ‘How he spent Father’s Day with his new girlfriend.’”

Further proof that a brand is not what a company says it is, but rather what people perceive it to be.

Was just reading through the battle mode comments (which I haven’t figured out a good way to show off yet), and ran across this one for a Nordstrom vs. Corona battle …

“Corona would fight dirty… Nordstrom is a pushover in a fight.”

Made me laugh …

A really interesting entry from friday night running on brand tags talks about the differences between passion brands and ambivalence brands. My favorite quote:

The most interesting brands to look at were those with the strongest polarizing effects. People are rarely ambivilent towards Apple, for instance, and their tag cloud reflects that perfectly. Their tags range from “overrated” and “pretentious” to “beautiful,” “innovative” and “amazing.” Contrast those results with a middle-of-the-road brand like Bridgestone or Xerox.

Go read the whole thing.

I just added a leaderboard for battle mode and the first thing that pops out is that Lego is beating all the competition with a 39 for 44 record (88.64% winning percentage). I was pretty surprised about this until I gave it a bit more thought: A) is there a better known children’s brand on the planet? B) who doesn’t like legos? have you ever heard anyone say anything bad about them?

Amazing stuff.

So I know I haven’t exactly had time to write about actual brand insights, but I’ve been uploading logos like mad (up to 600+) and building some new stuff, the latest of which I just decided was ready to test.

brand tags battle mode is simple. Two brands go in, one brand comes out. The rules are really up to you. I tend to think about it as which is the stronger brand, but it’s pretty open to interpretation (though many have suggested I lock down the criteria a little better).

Anyway, give it a try and let me know what you think.

Hi Everyone,
Just a few announcements that I thought you all might like to know about.

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BRAND TAGS BLOG (which you’re reading right now)
http://brandtags.net/blog

I thought it might be fun to start up a blog to both put up announcements as well as make note of interesting trends/observations on the site. I’ll be doing some of the writing as well as asking others for their two cents. If you’re interested in adding a post, feel free to get in touch with me via my blog: http://www.noahbrier.com/contact.php

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BRAND TAGS UK & HISPANIC
http://uk.brandtags.net
http://hispanic.brandtags.net

The biggest request other than adding brands has been to make local versions with local logos. I’ve taken this to heart and with the help of Jamie McKeown and Juan Tornoe - http://hispanictrending.net — I’ve managed to get these two versions going so far. I’m hoping to get more up as soon as possible, especially because unfortunately the idea is being copied without my permission, so if you would like to see another locale and would be willing to help collect logos, please be in touch.

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FINAL WORDS

Finally, I just wanted to thank everyone for all their support. This has been amazing fun so far and has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. If you have ideas for the site or want to see additional brands or regions added, please don’t hesitate to ask.

I will also be adding some more features in the coming weeks, so watch out.

Thanks again,
Noah

Where I and some other very smart folks will be writing some thoughts and observations gathered on the site and other news will go. Unfortunately it looks a bit ugly right now, but this will have to do for the time being …