Youth research and intelligence platform, YPulse, has released its Cool Brands 2026 report — a ranking of brand coolness among 13-39-year-olds.
The top 10 “cool” brands are, in order, Nike, PINK, Apple Pay, TikTok, Jordan, YouTube, Cash App, Doritos, Fortnite, and the iPhone. (Why Apple Pay and the iPhone are listed as brands instead of Apple, Inc. makes no sense, but here we are).
YPulse tracks more than 1,400 brands in North America and Western Europe weekly. Based on more than 200,000 interviews continuously conducted by YPulse in a 12-month period, the rankings reflect the number of young consumers who actively select each brand as “cool”, offering one of the most robust measures of cultural relevance among younger generations.
YPulse’s Chief Content Officer MaryLeigh Bliss says that while the report includes findings from 13-39-year-olds, it spotlights a critical subset for marketers: teens. YPulse data shows that “coolness” is one of the most consistent and powerful drivers of brand preference among 13-17-year-olds, ranking above “high quality” and “trendy” when it comes to the products they want to buy, she adds.
Methodology
Rankings are drawn from the YPulse Brand Tracker, which monitors 1,400+ brands weekly across North America and Western Europe. For each brand, respondents selected which brands they felt were “Cool” from a list of up to 16 brands within a single industry they’re aware of. Cool scores reflect the share of 13–39-year-olds selecting each brand, collected continuously over a 12-month period among more than 200,000 annual interviews.
The Teen subset is drawn from more than 43,711 interviews with 13–17-year-olds across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Spain to offer a data-driven picture of where brand perception stands with the next generation of consumers.
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