• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, March 15, 2007

Market researcher Youthography just released its latest "Ping," a quarterly syndicated research report that tracks brand favorites among American tweens, teens and young adults: Turns out that to be loved, you've got to be hated.

"The biggest trend we've noticed is that you can't be a favorite brand and not have a fair number of detractors," says Max Valiquette, president of the Toronto-based company. The research asks more than 1,600 people, aged 9 to 29, to name their three favorites brands and their three least favorites, unaided. As a result, many brands can wind up on both lists.

"While Nike comes in first, overall, it only got 257 mentions," he says. "Even among the coolest brands, there's this fracture - it's not like if you don't want to wear Nikes, you're stuck. These kids are incredibly aware of how many other brands are out there." (Nike, he said, was closely followed by Apple, Sony and American Eagle in overall brand popularity.)

The report also showed a continuation of tweens morphing closer to teendom all the time. "In the past three years, we've seen this steadily increasing trend of teens and tweens having more in common-today's tweens are aspiring to be teens much more than they used to," says Valiquette.

Tweens gravitate more toward clothing brands, but as kids age, they gradually shift toward technology brands. "People's favorites change as they get older from brands they wear to brands that do, especially among males," he says. For tween boys, for example, the top three brands are Nike, Levi's and Old Navy, while for teens and young adult males, the top three are Nike, Sony and Apple.

And when it comes to retailers, "Wal-Mart continues to be the death star," he says. "People shop there - it's just that they don't like to shop there," he says. "It's the place Mom shops, and the kids go along." Still, the retailer came up as the No. 1 least favorite brand for male tweens, and both female and male teens and young adults.