GenDigital

Top Celebrities & Athletes - Q4 2011

Here's a look at the most popular celebrities and professional athletes from the Q4 wave of the Top Ten List report. On a sequential basis, Daniel Tosh experienced the largest increase in popularity among teen and college guys. Among female respondents, Ryan Gosling shot up the ranks of the list to secure top billing for the first time. Taylor Lautner had been number one for the past five quarters. The big story on the female celebrity side of things is Mila Kunis. She number one among the guys and number two among the young ladies. It's rare (especially in the female celeb category) to see both teen/college males and females rank the the same celebrity as high as they did, but the occasional exception pops up and this is one of those cases.

The most popular pro athletes category saw quite a bit of change compared to the prior quarter. Tim Tebow replaced LeBron James the top athlete among teen and college guys, while the Denver QB was also number one among teen and college females for the first time. Tiger Woods was the last pro athlete to be number one in a wave of Top Ten among both teen/college males and females and you have to go back almost five years for that, so that's quite a statement being made by the audience for Tebow.

Top Male Celebrities (By Gender)

Among Males

1. Will Ferrell

2. Matt Damon

3. Brad Pitt

4. Daniel Tosh

5. Bradley Cooper

Among Females

1. Ryan Gosling

2. Taylor Lautner

3. Ryan Reynolds

4. Johnny Depp

5. Bradley Cooper

Top Female Celebrities (By Gender)

Among Males

1. Mila Kunis

2. Jessica Alba

3. Megan Fox

4. Zooey Deschanel

5. Scarlett Johansson

Among Females:

1. Rachel McAdams

2. Mila Kunis

3. Jennifer Aniston

4. Reese Witherspoon

5. Emma Stone

 

Q1 2010 College Top Ten List Report Highlights

Another quarter is almost complete and that brings us a new wave of Top Ten. College is the first to come out this week followed by Kids and Teens next Monday. For some reason, may be it's just the simplicity of the report, Top Ten garners more press mentions than any other YT report, go figure, but I think the concept of ranking against a particular topic is something that most everyone can relate to pretty easily.

Moving onward here, the Q1 wave of College Top Ten was tweaked a bit as the celeb category was broken out by more general Hollywood celeb personalities and sports-specific personalities. We'll also continue to rotate between most socially responsible companies/brands and favorite sports-related activities. When all is said, we covered a total of 12 individual categories including favorite TV shows, magazine titles, musical artists, movie & DVD titles, male Hollywood celebs, female Hollywood celebs, sports celebs, video game titles, web destinations, clothing retailers/brands, footwear brands and sports-related activities. To read the full background and view the table of contents, click here. For non Youth Trends subscribers, Top Ten can be downloaded/purchased for $399.

Some topline highlights:

- TV: relatively unchanged at the top compared to Q4 '09, White Collar debuts among males and American Idol makes a surprise appearance among females

- Mag titles: six of the top ten titles among females are trending downwards on a sequential basis, sorta sums of the category's picture fairly well

- Musical artists: goo goo for Gaga and welcome to the list NeedToBreathe

- Movies & DVDs: V-Day performs as expected, no let up for The Hangover

- Hollywood/sports celebs: Jessica's back at the top, LeBron is still king and Elisha debuts for the first time

- Video game titles: COD Modern Warfare 2, 'nuff said

- Web sites: check out Sporcle, it's legit...

Q4 '09 College Top Ten List Highlights

The Q4 '09 wave of College Top Ten is out and available to download. You can view the report background and full table of contents here. Top Ten provides an authentic top of mind look of what's most popular among young people (college students in this case) with respect to pop culture topics including TV shows, musical artists, video game titles, web destinations, celebrities and other lifestyle-related areas.

A few brief highlights: in the realm of TV, for the third straight wave, The Office was the top pick among college males, while Grey's was once again the top show among females. Glee debuted as the third most popular TV show among females, while MTV's Jersey Shore came in 9th among males and 6th among females.

For the second straight wave Taylor Swift was the most popular musical artist among all students, while Breaking Benjamin, Lady Antebellum and Justin Bieber appeared for the first time. Twilight stars continue to dominate the celebrity rankings with Robert Pattinson leading the way along with Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart.

On the retail front, fast fashion is still where it's at as evidenced by the performance of Forever 21, but Urban Outfitters is picking up momentum as well as premium yoga wear retailer lululemon. Finally, we included a new measurement for the Q4 wave as college respondents provided their choices for the most socially responsible companies or brands. Leading the socially responsible pack was Ben & Jerry's followed by Burt's Bees and Coca-Cola.

To learn more about Top Ten, you can visit the Youth Trends site.

The Relevance & Staying Power Of Twitter For Teens & College Kids

Lately, it's a rarity for a day to pass without someone asking us about Twitter and the youth market. The questions range from the straightforward and simple (do they use it?) to something more strategic in nature (how do I integrate Twitter into our social media marketing plans in a relevant way that will attract and engage our target audience?).

For starters, in terms of registrations, Twitter's growth among teens and college students has been impressive through the first nine months of the year. At the start of the year, only about 5% had registered for a Twitter account compared to 19% at the end of September. Of course, that's only one data point. The more impactful findings are things like frequency of access, frequency of updates and the number of people the individual is actively following. Basically, how sticky is the platform? From our perspective, these are the more meaningful metrics.

Frequency of Access:

- among the 19% with a Twitter account, only about a quarter (23%) have posted 5 or more updates during the past week and about one in five (19%) said they posted less than 5 updates since first registering an account

Followers & Following:

- teen and college student Twitter users have an average of 57 followers and they follow an average of 61 people, companies and brands

- the most commonly followed non-people are news & information centric: ESPN (net sub-brand mentions), CNN, Fox News, NY Times (net sub-brand mentions), Google (net sub-brand mentions) and Xbox (net sub-brand mentions)

- the most commonly followed "notable" people/personalities are the one's you'd expect them to be: Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz Taylor Swift, John Mayer, LeBron James and Dane Cook

- more than three in ten (32%) say they are at least somewhat interested in using Twitter more to follow updates from friends, brands/companies

So, what's the net here? Well, we think it's a fair assessment to say Twitter, at least among the teen/college segment is still pretty niche in terms of stickiness. It's not necessarily a bad move strategically to include Twitter as one element within a broader social media plan, but in that same breath, probably not the most pragmatic play to make it your sole element.

The updated and expanded  Q4 '09 Youth Social Media Marketing & Insights report will be available to download/purchase the week of November 23rd.

Teen Top Ten List Report: Q3 2009

The latest wave of Top Ten for the teen segment is now available via the Youth Trends Research Store. This wave of Top Ten covers the top TV shows, magazines, web destinations, musical artists, video game titles, movies, celebrities and clothing retailers. The Q3 '09 wave was completed the week of August 17th using a sample of 1,011 teens between the ages of 13 and 18. The final wave of the year for Top Ten will be conducted in the next two weeks.

Tween Superstar Will Stir Controversy Pot With Latest Photos

Well, I guess all I can say is oops. Without a doubt the media circus will be buzzing today (in between the doom and gloom recession pieces) about a racy photo of Miley Cyrus aka Hannah Montana that will be featured in the June issue of Vanity Fair. Who wants to bet that VF's June issue will end up being its top seller at the newsstand this year? Before everyone goes into the how she could this diatribe, let's remember for a sec that she is 15 years old and is surrounded by handlers. Handlers being parents, managers and agents. Simple questions for them: Where were you when the shoot occurred, and why would you go along with it? Truth be told, in today's sexed up and violence filled media world, you really can't get anymore wholesome than Hannah Montana, ok may be High School Musical comes close, but Hannah still kills them in popularity. Far and away she is the most popular celebrity among American kids and tweens. Call it what you will, but this story is sure to be in the headlines for at least the next couple of days and will put Disney, the engine behind the billion dollar Hannah Montana immediately on the defensive. 

Another P.R. Score For Rachael Ray

Rachael Ray got another P.R. three point basket yesterday, when it was announced, and then picked up by many outlets, including USA Today, that she would be providing some of her "yummo" food specialties to the crew of the space shuttle Discovery who are scheduled to launch into space next week. Ray, who we've been referring to as Gen Y's Oprah, continues to do a great job marketing herself and all of her media outlets including her new syndicated talk show, which I believe, but don't quote me on it, is the best performing rookie syndicated show of the season so far.

KFed Greeted Enthusiastically By Teen Audience

Britney must have been sweating bullets as she introduced her "man" Kevin Federline on last night's Teen Choice Awards on Fox. It was KFed's first live network television performance, and based on today's reviews and last night's reaction from the crowd, KFed did not disappoint. Have I been wrong all this time and Mr. Britney Spears is really the man? If he shows up on the October Top Ten 10 for Musical Artists, I guess I will be nothing less than humbled. Not by coincidence, this performance could end up being huge for Federline as his debut album called "Playing With Fire," hits stores next week.

Example of a Bad Example

She rocked in "Blue Crush," and now just four short years later after successful major roles in films like "Win A Date With Tad Hamilton," "Beyond The Sea," and of course "Superman Returns," it seems to me that she needs a superman-sized portion of french fries so the Santa Ana winds don't blow her over. Interestingly enough, teen and college females might not be as impressionable as you thought they were. Kate slipped off the Celebrity Top Ten List last April and even with the buzz around "Superman Returns," she still didn't get back on the list earlier this month, although boyfriend Orlando Bloom did make the list, coming in at number 9 among college women.

Jessica Simpson's New Single Lacking Love

Jessica Simpson, who through all her ups and downs still ranks a respectable number 7 on the Youth Trends Celebrity Top Ten List) has a new single out, which you can listen to for free on her site. The early feedback from music critics isn't exactly positive. The new album itself won't be available until August 29th, but die-hard Simpson fans can pre-order "A Public Affair" on her site now. Note to Jessica Simpson site producers, you might want to consider adding a little pizazz to the site asap, I would have to imagine the domain jessicasimpson.com gets its fair share of traffic, and what is up there now, is pretty embarrassing to say the least. There are C and D list celebs with far superior Internet presences.