I was reading Groundswell by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li while I was doing my laundry and stumbled upon a very interesting bit of information. There is a way to see what people think of your brand, or rather how they categorize it.
If you are familiar with del.icio.us then you know where I am going with this. For those that don’t, del.icio.us is a site where you can  bookmark the sites you feel are interesting and then choose keywords that represent what you think of that bookmarked site. This way people can quickly find a wide range of websites that others think are very interesting. Del.icio.us can benefit a company in many ways to, especially in finding out what people really think of your brand’s personality. 
When people bookmark a site on del.icio.us.com they assign tags or keywords to that site. So for example, if you sell persian rugs, you would tag your rugs as soft, high quality, or exotic, but your customers might really think that your rugs are stainless or durable. Then by knowing this you will be able to either strengthen this brand image or change it towards what you think is best. 
The best thing about it is that it’s FREE.