The cities where consumers chat most about brands

If you're a car brand, you're the talk of the town in Houston.

If you're a financial service brand, Jacksonville is where folks are likely to chat you up.

And if you're some sort of travel services company, Miami is the hub for brand chatter.

Talk creates sales. Marketers are just beginning to discover that consumers in some cities are far more talkative about their brands than folks living in other cities.

For that matter, residents of these same three cities — Houston, Jacksonville and Miami — are more likely than residents of any other major U.S. cities to have verbal or online conversations about brands of any kind.

"Marketers recognize that consumers trust each other more than anyone else," says Ed Keller, CEO of Keller Fay Group, the market research specialist behind the new study to be released Monday, America's Most Talkative Cities. "Every brand wants to be a brand that people are talking about."

Now, marketers are starting to recognize that they may be able to regionally target their brands to those cities and towns where folks are more receptive to talking about brands in general, and, more specifically, the very kinds of products that they specifically market or sell. This is no small matter.

Some 2.1 billion brand impressions are made daily on consumers from word of mouth marketing, says Keller.

The TalkTrack study is based on 75,000 consumer interviews conducted over the past two years in the nation's 50 largest cities.

It also tracked the most talkative — and least talkative — cities. The average consumer nationally has 79 conversations about one brand or another every week. But in Houston, where brand talk is king, the typical consumer has 95 brand conversations a week. Jacksonville and Miami ranked two and three, in that arena, with 94 and 93 brand conversations, respectively.

The seven others, in order: Salt Lake City, Atlanta, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Diego, Norfolk, Va.; and West Palm Beach, Fla. Seven of th! e 10 cities ranked as America's "most talkative" were in the South, notes Keller.

Nationally, the most talked about brand topics are media, entertainment, food and dining, says Keller. The study did not track specific brands by name.

Among the study's other findings:

• Car talk. If you live in Houston, you're 37% more likely to talk about auto brands than other consumers.

• Money talk. If you live in Jacksonville, you're 56% more likely to chat about financial service brands than others.

• Trip talk. If you live in Miami, you're 75% more likely to discuss travel services than other folks.

Despite the explosive growth of social media, more than 90% of brand-related conversations still take place off-line, says Keller.