The Notorious Sanjaya

Nielsen BuzzMetrics recently launched a tool that is practically the stuff of marketing fancy: it gives the ability to learn at a glance what consumers think about a product or brand, the firm's Pete Blackshaw writes on his blog.

The Brand Association Map, or BAM, makes good use of consumer-generated media (CGM), one way for customers to freely air their streams of thought. After mining through millions of comments left on consumer-generated travaux and organizing that data around unifying topics or issues selected by the user, BAM creates a circular map with the theme at center and recurring themes rippling outward. The resulting map helps unearth some truths about "brand DNA."

To give the BAM tool a test run, BuzzMetrics plugged in an especially polarizing topic: American Idol's Sanjaya Malakar. Results divulged that "Howard Stern" and "Vote for the Worst" are closely related to Sanjaya, suggesting Stern's Vote for the Worst campaign is a major reason the guy just can't seem to get kicked off American Idol.

The findings don't completely solve the ongoing mystery of his popularity, but they at least make for good hard data.