While the runways boast couture and fashions that you rarely see walking down the street, some of the top cities in the U.S. are keeping comfortable in their sweats.

For the second year in a row, the nation’s top per capita consumer of sweats is Philadelphia, PA while New York was seventh, Los Angeles ranked eighth, and Chicago was twentieth.

The top 10 cities for sweats consumption:

1.  Philadelphia, PA
2. Hartford, CT
3. Pittsburgh, PA
4. Lafayette, LA
5. Laredo, TX
6. Boston, MA
7. New York, NY
8. Los Angeles, CA
9. Victoria, TX
10. Scranton, PA

Perhaps these purchases are travel-related.  Spirit Airlines passengers are the biggest buyers of sweats, followed by Jet Blue, Continental and US Air. Foreign airlines have really high sweat purchase numbers too – especially Asian carriers. On the flip side, Southwest Airlines passengers buy the fewest number of sweat apparel items.

Source: Experian Marketing Services Simmons

Photo: Shutterstock

The following graph illustrates the global growth between July 2011 and July 2012, based on share of visits to all sites by country:

Other niche social networks that have experienced significant gain include Stock Twits in the US, Redidt in Australia, and FanPop in the UK.

According to Bill Tancer, head of Global Research at Experian Marketing Services, the growth of Instagram and Pinterest over the past year has been successful because they haven’t tried to be ‘another Facebook.’ Both networks are image based – something people love and relate to better than just words. For retail brands, sites like Pinterest present a great opportunity to promote products in a compelling and organized way to a wide group of people, globally.

Deeper functionally, combined with a lower technical barrier to entry, will result in new leaders in social media being created, accepted and used within a matter of days – compared to the rate of adoption happening now over the course of weeks and months.

Also included in the study for July 2011 to July 2012:

What social networks do you use most frequently? Do the results of this study surprise you at all? Feel free to share your thoughts with our readers in the comments section below.

Experian Marketing Services, a leading provider of data, analytics and marketing technologies, today announced an expanded relationship with Adrea Rubin Marketing, Inc., the life and health insurance marketing leader.

This relationship makes Adrea Rubin Marketing a preferred provider of Experian Marketing Services’ ChoiceScore to the life and health insurance vertical.

ChoiceScore helps marketers identify and more effectively market to underbanked consumers. Using the most comprehensive array of noncredit data available from Experian, including consumer demographic, behavioral and geo-demographic information, ChoiceScore’s custom models offer users the ability to select specific consumers based on potential risk.

“Experian Marketing Services is a long-time, trusted partner. Their richness of data is excellent, and they have valuable predictive tools that help marketers in the insurance vertical be successful,” said Adrea Rubin, chief executive officer, Adrea Rubin Marketing.

“Expanding our relationship with Experian will help us better serve the life and health insurance industry to reach underserved consumers with new products and services.”

Adrea Rubin Marketing has worked with more than 30 different insurance carriers selling life, health, and property and casualty products. These carriers market via direct mail, outbound telemarketing, and digital and alternate media channels.

Adrea Rubin Marketing’s experience enables insurance carriers to reach the most profitable segments of the Choicescore database as well as their own policyholder file. The firm’s ability to optimize the data as it applies to each individual carrier engagement is unparalleled.

“Adrea Rubin’s presence in the insurance industry makes this expanded relationship a natural fit,” said Rick Erwin, president of Data and Analytics, Experian Marketing Services. “This next step will increase the availability of a leading marketing product designed to help marketers reach consumers who may not otherwise be reachable.”

Learn more about Experian Marketing Services.

Photo: Shutterstock