Turning Brands Into Toys

I stumbled upon JWT's Brand Toys website and have become obsessed. Using data from Millward Brown's BrandZ study and online buzz data from Social Mention, Brand Toys generates avatars (aka "toys") that visualize each brands'  personality. The toys are all generated using the same design rules and have specific attributes and characteristics based on their brand attributes. The mocked up mouse below illustrates the parameters and rules on how toys are rendered.

I particularly like that you can select multiple brands and compare their toy avatars. This allows for a quick, simple visualization of how brands are similar to and different from each other. Below is a comparison I created of Google v. Yahoo. A particular difference that stuck me were the eyes of the characters. Google's toy has large, wide-opened eyes, where as the Yahoo toy has closed eyes and a huge, open-mouthed smile. This indicates that Google has a greater level of charisma than Yahoo, but that Yahoo ranks higher than Google in terms of positive brand qualities. All in all it's a super cool and fun way to understand how brands differ from each other.