Brandtags: a valuable crowdsourcing website for brand owners

Definition

Crowdsourcing: “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.” – Jeff Howe, a Wired editor

The term, coined and defined by Howe in 2006, serves as a powerful strategy for companies, organizations and entrepreneurs who utilize it.

Wired, a monthly magazine and online news source, focuses on how innovative ideas are changing the world. [via Wired Press Center]

Crowdsourcing Sites

Company naming, logo design, tagline creation, web design and graphic design are just a few capabilities of crowdsourcing websites, like crowdSPRING. For example: Users can submit handwritten forms to Microtask, which transcribes them into electronic documents within one business day. Microtask, along with most other crowdsourcing sites, can save users money and time by outsourcing. After researching crowdsourcing sites, I was still stuck on an example we used in my social media class because it was intriguing to me as a consumer and communicator.

brandtags

Brandtags is a crowdsourced collection of consumers’ opinions of individual brands. According to its website, “a brand exists entirely in people’s heads, therefore it is whatever they say it is.” Consumers are shown a brand’s logo and are asked to describe it with any word(s). Brand owners can see how consumers view their brands from the tag clouds which the website generates. Tag clouds, a visual representation of consumers’ opinions on a given brand, enlarge the descriptions that consumers have used the most.  For example: One of the largest words in Apple’s tag cloud is “expensive.”

Apple’s tag cloud from brandtags.com.

Importance of Opinions

As I explored this website, typing my opinions of brands became like a game to me. I got excited when I recognized a logo, and I enjoyed looking at tag clouds to see if others shared the same opinions.

More and more consumers will utilize crowdsourcing websites such as brandtags.com if they actually enjoy using it, providing brand owners with a larger amount of opinions. As the amount of the same opinion increases, the accuracy of it being a representation of the population as a whole increases. This “accuracy level” is valuable to brand owners because it can help guide their focuses. For example: After seeing its tag cloud, Apple might create a campaign focusing on how the prices of its products reflect their quality.

To explore brands, guess brands and search tags (which is everything on the website except tagging brands), consumers must log in to the website with Facebook. Consumers will likely post and share their opinions on Facebook, increasing the traffic to brandtags.com.

Share your opinions on brandtags.com!