There’s a cloud sitting on my tongue;

“Tag clouds,” like the one to the right of this entry, are just fancy ways of organizing the topics discussed most on a particular blog.  The larger the type, the more entries are tagged with it–it helps you get a feel for the subjects an author will write about the most.  On this blog, for instance, “commerce,” “fonts!,” “fashion” and “photography” are tagged the most, so they are the most noticeable.  In a report I did for work, I acutally used this kind of layout to emphasize the words and phrases most liked and disliked among respondents to provide a stark visual contrast that would be immediately recognizable, and overall it worked quite well. 

Now it seems that there are those out there who want to look at whole brands from this perspective:

Enter Brand Tags, a relatively new website created by Noah Brier (as reported by Gawker and The Wall Street Journal) that places logos immediately in front of a person, and has them write a snap-judgement-like word or phrased reaction to it.  Brands are chosen randomly, and this was what I found when visiting the site:

(screen capture from the website for illustrative purposes only)

You can continue to enter in words or phrases, skip a brand if you’re unfamiliar, or go straight to the brand list to see what others are saying–or better yet, type in a potential tag into the search bar, and see what people come up with.

Scientific?  Not really–it’s a self-selecting kind of survey among those who hear about it from either an article, or deli.ci.ous, or something similar.  Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating–perhaps even sobering–way to gauge how others out there on the Web perceive your brand.

Come on…you know you want a peek…