407. YPulse. Loyal Consumers & Cool Brands.
MaryLeigh Bliss
April 16, 2026
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In this episode, MaryLeigh Bliss, Chief Content Officer at YPulse, discusses what young consumers mean when they call a brand cool, and why that answer sometimes diverges from what keeps them loyal to it.
Bliss draws on two recent YPulse reports: a brand tracker covering over a thousand brands across 20 youth-specific diagnostics, and a brand loyalty study of 1,500 young consumers balanced across race, ethnicity, and gender.
The conversation explores the following questions:
Why did teen brand loyalty jump dramatically in a single year, and what does it reveal about how economic conditions shape consumer behavior across multiple brand dimensions simultaneously
Why Apple Pay ranks higher on coolness than the iPhone and the Apple brand itself, and whether that pattern is specific to Apple or a broader phenomenon
What Dove did to move 67 places in the cool ranking in one year, and whether it's repeatable
Why the gap between wanting a loyalty program and actually belonging to one has persisted, and what the friction actually is
How loyalty behavior among young consumers of color differs in ways that change the strategic timeline for building brand equity
YPulse is the leading authority on Millennials and Gen Z: tweens, teens, college students and young adults. They provide strategic insight to companies and organizations via their subscription-based syndicated research content as well as their custom research and consulting services. Staffed with a cross-functional team of researchers, marketers, writers, and technologists, they give their clients a 360-degree view of what it’s like to be a Millennial or Gen Z today.
As Chief Content Officer, MaryLeigh Bliss oversees YPulse’s syndicated products. Her role also involves acting as a culture and youth insights expert, consulting with brands to identify actionable insights, align young consumer strategy, and layer generational and youth knowledge over data findings.
MaryLeigh has worked with a range of brands, including Facebook, Hampton, Bravo, HBO, Target, Best Buy, and Gap, and has been quoted as a youth insights authority by publications including The New York Times, Digiday, Business Insider, and Adweek. She has appeared as a Gen Z and Millennial expert on Bloomberg News, Fortune, and NPR Marketplace, and been a speaker at many off-sites and conferences. MaryLeigh’s interest in youth culture originated from her love of YA literature and pop culture anthropology, and she is continuing her passion for decoding and demystifying the next generations of consumers at YPulse.
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MaryLeigh Bliss
YPulse