Published quarterly, the Ad Age-Harris Poll rankings are sourced from The Harris Poll’s daily brand tracking tool, QuestBrand, to identify companies with the greatest quarter-over-quarter increase in equity among specific age cohorts. Read the last edition of the Gen Z poll here. And check out the latest edition of the baby boomer poll here.

X, formerly Twitter, tops the latest Ad Age-Harris Poll Gen Z brand tracker, which ranks brands that made significant progress in gaining attention from Gen Z in the third quarter of 2024. 

The ranking is some needed good news for the platform as it continues to try to win back advertisers that have fled over brand safety issues during Elon Musk’s ownership reign. Despite Musk’s divisive political posts—and that the site is a catalyst for conspiracy theories—X’s equity among Gen Z has increased. That means more Gen Zers agree that the brand is headed in the right direction, according to Harris Poll.

Also: X’s global head of marketing on why she joined the platform

Rounding out the third quarter’s top five are HelloFresh, Chick-fil-A, GNC and Panera Bread.

Published quarterly, the Ad Age-Harris Poll rankings are sourced from The Harris Poll’s daily brand tracking tool, QuestBrand, to identify companies with the greatest quarter-over-quarter increase in equity among specific age cohorts—that is, how much a generation’s perception of these brands is changing from quarter to quarter. 

While X gained ground with Gen Z, it still has work to do with women in the generation. A Morning Consult report published in August found that 70% of Gen Z men use X, compared with 51% of Gen Z women. YouTube, by contrast, enjoys a more even split with 98% of men and 96% of women using it. 

A Harris Poll representative pointed to the election and sports as drivers of the X’s popularity.

“In the midst of an election season yielding plenty of memeable moments and daily polling dumps, X (formerly Twitter) remains the place for Americans to get and engage with real-time information. The Olympics also provided a major boost in Q3, with millions more posts and billions more impressions than it’d otherwise accrue,” Harris Poll CEO Will Johnson said in a statement.

According to X, the site saw 103 billion impressions, 11 billion video views and 238.2 million posts during the Paris Olympics. For comparison, the 2016 Olympics got 187 million tweets and generated 75 billion total impressions.

X was also the place to find “brat summer” memes. The term “brat” comes from Charli XCX’s latest album. In a post on X on July 21, the singer declared that “kamala IS brat,” giving Kamala Harris a Gen Z boost, while kicking off “brat summer.” 

“Brat” was Collins Dictionary’s 2024 word of the year, defined as “characterized by a confident, independent, and hedonistic attitude.” While Charli XCX gave Harris X love, Musk has personally advocated for Donald Trump on the platform. He allowed Trump to rejoin X in August. Trump was kicked off the platform in 2021 following the January 6th insurrection, well before Musk took control of the platform in October 2022.

Below, a closer look at some of the other brands that made attention gains with Gen Z.

Food

Food brands had a strong quarter.

Meal delivery service HelloFresh has been pushing its ease-of-use in a TV campaign that features one man saying “I’m trying to be more of an adult and actually cook”—a message that appears Gen Z-focused.

Chick-fil-A rolled out a limited-time honey pepper pimento chicken sandwich and recently announced a new Play app aimed at families of Gen Alpha kids.

While Panera gained ground with Gen Z, it also had its eye on the next-oldest generation—it launched a Millennial Meal for National Avocado Day—an avocado toast with an iced coffee. Panera named a new chief marketing officer in August, bringing on Papa Johns marketer Mark Sahambura, who will play a key role in its ongoing  agency review. The chain also rolled out a new line of soups in time for fall.

Sriracha maker Huy Fong Foods (6th) made the list, despite the brand’s supply chain issues leading to a shortage of the spicy condiment.

Talenti (8th) put a twist on sundaes with a “Case of the Mondaes” campaign, which involved a kit with strawberry sorbetto, non-alcoholic sparkling rose, freeze-dried strawberries, white chocolate shavings and freeze-dried edible flowers. Fans in New York, Chicago and Dallas could order the kit via DoorDash.

Coca-Cola (16th) turned heads with Coke-flavored Oreos and an Oreo-flavored Coke. Coke Zero has also become the exclusive packaged goods sponsor of the video game EA Sports College Football 25. The beverage giant has embraced AI in its advertising.

Clothing

Harris Poll cited Fashion Nova’s (9th) strong social media presence and influencer marketing (including clothing lines with rappers Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion) as key drivers of its success. The retailer started as a single brick-and-mortar store in Los Angeles in 2006. Today, it has five stores across Southern California, even buying a new Beverly Hills office space for $118 million. The vast majority of the brand’s sales are online, fueled by its social media prowess—it has over 4 million TikTok followers and more than 21 million Instagram followers.

The brand recently made headlines for a costume that appears to make fun of the rapper Drake with a “BBL Drizzy” costume that showed a model wearing hair clips and a “Papi” sweatshirt.

There is a general rule of thumb that you can spot a millennial versus a Gen Zer by their socks, with millennials often wearing ankle socks and Gen Zers wearing crew socks. That trend seems to have helped Hanes (17th), which sells plain white crew socks.

AI impacts

Meta (13th) rolled out teen accounts on Instagram. The accounts are automatically private with strict messaging settings, sensitive content restrictions and a “sleep mode” that pauses notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.  

Meta is also adding more AI features, including voice listening and response in multiple languages and help with photo editing. AI and ad revenue helped fuel Meta’s solid third-quarter earnings.

Also read: Meta bets on AI as the future of extended reality

Speaking of AI, many Gen Zers consider it a resource for work-related tasks like summarizing documents and meetings and conducting research, as well as non-work-related tasks such as finding inspiration and brainstorming. So it’s no surprise that OpenAI (14th) gained ground in the quarter.

OpenAI continues to roll out new features for ChatGPT including voice response. The company also turned heads when it ditched its governance structure to become a for-profit organization, leaving CEO Sam Altman with billions in equity. 

Young people are increasingly using ChatGPT and social media over Google searches, including for gifts for the upcoming holiday season. In response, some universities are embracing AI to help prepare students for the workforce.

Wikipedia (19th) has taken action to be on the lookout for shoddy entries and edits made by people using AI by relying on human editors to fix or delete them. “The Editors” is a fiction novel by Stephen Harrison about “Infopendium” editors who weaponize the site’s content. Wikipedia also recently launched dark mode.

Below, other brands that made this quarter’s list.

Vitamin and supplements retailer GNC started carrying new products, including protein bar brand Trubar and an apple cider drink by former “Real Housewife of New York” Heather Thomson. GNC CEO Michael Costello is also backing instant coffee startup Diamond Brew.

Discover (7th) continues to feature Jennifer Coolidge in ads. Earlier this year, Capital One announced that it would acquire Discover. But the deal is currently being investigated by New York Attorney General Letitia James for potentially violating the state’s antitrust laws.

GoFundMe (10th) has seen a surge in Gaza-related fundraisers, from general aid to helping specific families leave. The crowdfunding site also helped people raise money to get athletes to the Olympics, pay for gender-affirming care and assist families of victims of the Trump assassination attempt.

Kia’s (11th) anti-theft software fix for older models is working after years of viral videos showing how easy it is to steal them. Older cars often have turn-key ignitions and lack immobilizers, which rely on a computer chip in the car and another in the key that communicate to confirm that the key is authentic and really belongs to that vehicle. 

Kia has also continued to invest in its EVs. It set EV sales records in the U.S., fueled by its first three-row electric SUV, the EV9. In August, Kia’s EV sales were up 27% from last year. Over the summer, Kia ran ads for its Carnival minivan—although it is avoiding the phrase minivan in its marketing, instead going with “MPV,” for multipurpose vehicle.

Dove (12th) partnered with Serena Williams to give away limited-edition bars of soap. The soaps were tennis-ball green, smelled of passion fruit and lemon balm and had “confident” engraved on them. The soap came in a limited-edition canister with three soaps per canister, similar to the packaging of a tube of tennis balls.

Unilever-owned Dove also launched its “Beauty Never Gets Old” campaign to celebrate 67 years of its iconic soap bar. The ad starred older Dove soap users.

In July, Dove’s longtime chief marketing officer Alessandro Manfredi left the brand after 18 years.

Netflix (15th) got a boost from Gen Z discovering the early 2000s rom-com “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” Gen Z also loves “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder,” a murder mystery with a pop soundtrack that follows a high schooler looking to make her college application stand out by solving the five-year-old murder of a local girl. Netflix also partnered with Google to make the latest season of “Emily in Paris” shoppable. The streamer has also been investing in its gaming strategy, with another 80 titles reportedly in development.

Netflix inked partnerships with cloud data platform Snowflake, data broker LiveRamp and clean-room technology company InfoSum to give advertisers access to clean rooms, a relatively new privacy technology that lets advertisers share data across platforms. And last month it hired Nicolle Pangis as VP of advertising for the U.S. and Canada, a more focused role than the global post Peter Naylor abruptly left in July.

In a 2023 survey from McKinsey, more than half of Gen Z respondents said fitness was a very high priority for them. That has boded well for Planet Fitness (15th) which had a solid second quarter, with same-store sales up 4.2%, and is due to report third-quarter results later this week. The brand has also been meeting the demand for strength training among Gen Z by adding more weights and machines. (24 Hour Fitness made last quarter’s list.)

Match Group-owned Hinge (20th) seems to be attracting more users from its sibling app, Tinder, as Gen Z searches for long-term relationships. While Hinge’s year-over-year downloads rose 8% as of August, Tinder’s year-over-year downloads fell 1%.  

Hinge’s “No Ordinary Love” campaign, which debuted in August, took the physical form of an 80-page zine anthology of love stories written by six contemporary authors—including Roxane Gay and R. O. Kwon, sharing the stories of six real couples who met on Hinge. The move was inspired by #BookTok, a TikTok subculture for discussing books.