• by Karl Greenberg , March 11, 2010

What do Ford Mustang, True Religion jeans, Xbox 360 and Coke have in common? Kids are curious about these brands, and are going online to ask questions about them en masse on social media platforms catering to youthful queries.

One of those sites -- a free Web service called ChaCha, which offers an 800 number, a text line, and social-media portals for queries -- has gotten millions of questions about top brands in several market categories. Answers are on ChaCha.com and places like Facebook and Twitter.

Marketing firm Frost & Sullivan analyzed queries made to ChaCha in the third quarter last year to discern which brands are hot and which are not. The study focused on gaming, consumer electronics (laptops), movies, apparel (jeans, shoes, and retail clothing), food and beverage, and auto.

Among the 125,000 questions related to the automotive industry, about 16,000 were about Ford, Chevy, Toyota, or GMC. Frost and Sullivan, which said Ford was the most-queried-about brand, found that 60.6% of the Ford queries were from people ages 18 to 24, and nearly 40% were from people 13 to 17. And most of the queries were about one car: Mustang.

Frost & Sullivan said the pony car -- the vehicle of which those between 13 and 24 were most aware -- made up 56% of questions related to Ford automobiles, while questions about F-150, Ranger, Focus, and Taurus each made up 7% of the queries. Other models in Ford's lineup combined made up 16% of the questions submitted regarding Ford models.

Kids not only asked more questions about Ford than any other automaker, but asked questions about where to buy specific models and how much they cost. Ford Mustang is also the auto brand that kids like the best, per the company -- which says young consumers asked questions like "What is the horsepower of a Ford Mustang?," "Is a Ford Mustang a muscle car?" and "What is a better car, a Ford Mustang or a Chevy Corvette?"

Nearly 64% of Chevy queries were from 18- to-24-year-olds; 37% were from 13- to-17-year-olds. Sixty-two percent of Toyota queries were from 18- to-24-year-olds, and 38% were younger.

In gaming devices, Xbox 360 was the leading brand with more than twice as many searches on xBox as the next-closest system, PlayStation, with Wii the third most queried-about system on ChaCha.

For apparel and jeans, questions come from a predominantly female audience, with the majority of questions about the True Religion brand, followed by Lucky Brand and All Mankind in third.

In shoes, Nike is the brand that gets by far the most queries -- with 1,856 and 754 questions from males and females, respectively, versus 364 and 184 respectively for Adidas, the nearest competitor. Reebok and New Balance are a distant third and fourth.