Brand tag website reveals least popular firms
By Matthew Moore
The London 2012 Olympics are "ugly" and a "mess", British Airways is "expensive" and "snooty", while Facebook is "annoying" and a "waste of time".
These are the verdicts of hundreds of thousands of consumers who entered the words they associate with some of the world’s biggest companies on a popular new website.
The site, Brand Tags, compiles all the answers to produce a "tag cloud" - an instant, visual illustration of how a brand is perceived.
The more times a word or phrase is entered, the bigger it appears in the cloud.
The site is fast becoming an outlet for angry shoppers, frustrated with their experience of corporations.
McDonalds is considered "disgusting", "greasy" and "unhealthy", while Wal-Mart, which owns the Asda supermarket chain in the UK, is thought of as "big", "cheap", "crap" and "evil".
Energy giants Shell and BP both have "expensive" as their most prominent tag – perhaps in light of concerns about the impact of rising petrol prices on both sides of the Atlantic.
But not all big brands have provoked negative responses.
Coca-Cola is seen as "refreshing", "delicious” and "classic", online retailer Amazon is considered "awesome" and "convenient", while the internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia is thought of as a source of "knowledge", while also being "unreliable".
British brands tend to come out badly in the survey, with the London 2012 Olympics producing particularly negative results.
The Beijing 2008 Games is one of the few brands which provoke more hostility – "boycott", "controversy", "Tibet" and "torture" are among the most prominent words in its tag cloud.
One brand associated with the UK that has provoked positive responses is Jaguar, which is considered "classy", "luxury" and "sleek".
The site, which has already received more than 840,000 tags since it started earlier this month, was set up by Noah Brier of the London-based media strategy firm Naked Communications.
To see all the tag clouds, and enter your own tags, visit Brand Tags.
