Labubu in the window, NFT in the screen, unlocking IP Magic of emotional marketing

Written by: Nancy, PANews

An ugly little monster, Labubu, stood quietly in the window, outside the glass, with fans queuing up to buy, just for the surprise of a hidden model. Similarly, a series of digital images are cast into NFTs on the chain, and the real thing is invisible, but it is sold out in just a few minutes.

One is real and touchable, and the other is only on the screen. These two IP forms seem to be in two worlds: reality and virtual, but in the era of emotionally driven consumption, they grow, explode and recreate myths with amazing similar logic. Behind this is the medium of social interaction, the projection of individual identity, and the cultural and emotional containers created by the IP era.

Emotional Resonance: It's not just the product that connects

Labubu's charm is far more than its furry appearance and unique design, but also an extension of the user's inner world, or the hidden monster image in the childhood graffiti, reflecting the lonely but complex self deep in his heart. This seemingly simple doll actually creates real emotional companionship for users, filling people's desire for belonging and love - as psychologist Maslow pointed out "the need for belonging and love".

At the same time, Labubu satisfies the psychological phenomenon of collecting habits. Collective behavior is seen in psychology as a manifestation of a sense of control. When users gain a sense of accomplishment by constantly accumulating and displaying Labubu dolls, this sense of possession in turn enhances self-identity and inner satisfaction. Behind each doll is a unique story: either the excitement of queuing up late at night to buy, or the emotional resonance when sharing collections with friends, these instants have become precious emotional treasures.

NFT also inspires a deep sense of group belonging and meets the social needs of people being accepted and recognized. What players collect is no longer just a string of cold codes, or a symbol of faith that touches the encrypted world for the first time, or a memory created by like-minded people.

The emotional resonance based on the sense of ownership and belonging not only meets the user's inner needs, but also is an invisible link between the user and the brand. At the same time, this emotional inspiration has opened up a new growth path for brands and creators. By deepening the emotional experience of users and building multi-dimensional cultural identity and community belongings, users can be long-term loyalty and continuous participation.

IP narrative: not just an asset, but also a story container

In the current wave of cultural consumption, a role has never been just an image. The core of a truly vital IP is to be able to build a narrative universe that makes people willing to immerse themselves in.

Labubu is such a typical case. As a core member of The Monsters series, Labubu might have been just a big-eyed monster with pointed ears at first, but after gradually gaining a personality, partner and growth trajectory, it grew from a doll to a character, and weaved a diverse and rich virtual network with other characters in the same series such as ZIMOMO and SkullPanda. The construction of this universe, relying on continuous content output, scene-based immersive experience layout, and deep user emotions participation mechanism, also allows Labubu's image to be extended to various physical carriers such as offline theme parks, limited-edge plush toys, blind boxes, assembled building blocks, etc.

This idea of ​​narrative IP construction is also obvious in the field of NFT. NFT projects have long realized that what can truly impress users and maintain the community is not a single scarcity, but the story behind the characters. For example, BAYC continues to expand its "Ape Universe" boundary by launching diverse products such as meta-universe, trendy clothing, games, and music; Azuki uses physical comics and trendy peripherals to enrich users' touchpoint experiences; Pudgy Penguins has even broken through the Web3 circle, entering traditional retail scenes with children's books and offline toys, emphasizing the cute healing attributes of the Penguin characters and the emotional narrative that accompany growth. What these cases have in common is that they all achieve a leap from visual symbols to cultural roles, making NFTs a role-driven narrative medium, rather than just an on-chain asset.

From this point of view, only those IP universes with long-term narrative structure and continuous content production capabilities truly have the cultural potential to travel through time and reach a wider audience.

Blind box gameplay: A game of scarcity and surprise

The blind box mechanism is a psychological game based on probability. Through artificially created uncertainty, products are separated from simple functional attributes and are given emotional value and trading potential. Create scarcity with probability, and stimulate emotions with scarcity, and emotions ultimately drive the formation of market value. The core of this mechanism is to make players have obsession with the "next time" in repeated attempts. In psychology, this psychological state is called "intermittent reinforcement".

Labubu combines the innovative gameplay of blind box mechanisms to give consumers a sense of surprise and challenge. Hidden models have pushed ordinary goods into the category of collectibles and even assets. Every time you open a box, it is not just an emotional consumption, but also a concrete probability game of emotions. The NFT field has also introduced similar gameplay, writing randomness and scarcity onto the chain in the form of smart contracts. Each Mint process is essentially a digital card draw. The algorithm determines the combination of images, backgrounds, and features, and the rarity almost replicates the hidden logic in the physical blind box.

More importantly, when a hidden Labubu is unblocked or a rare NFT is unveiled, the communication and emotional amplification mechanism on social networks is launched. From posting pictures in the circle of friends to bidding in the secondary market, rarity is quickly converted into a hard currency after being priced by the market.

Premium: FOMO Sentiment Market Pricing

A hidden Labubu soared to tens of thousands of yuan, and a rare NFT soared to millions or even tens of millions of dollars. Behind these amazing numbers, these are not simple price behaviors, but marketization of emotional value.

FOMO emotions are one of the core emotions that drive premiums. When buyers see others making transactions at high prices, they often arouse their urge to enter the market quickly. At this time, many buyers no longer make judgments based solely on the value of the work itself, but instead take action based on the psychological expectation of seizing the initiative or not being abandoned by the market, thus forming a positive feedback loop of price and further pushing up the premium. This behavior is actually a psychological bet on the possible value of the future. Not only that, market consensus has also been strengthened by factors such as increasing transaction prices and social media discussions, which has subsequently driven prices to continue to rise.

Some speculators/resellers are even well aware of the FOMO psychology and are interested in creating market hot spots, such as price manipulation, repurchase or limited release, hype and publicity, and scarce manufacturing, which stimulate the desire to buy, forming a bubble of price surge in the short term.

Although sentiment drives huge premiums and market activity, it is also accompanied by extremely high volatility risks. Once sentiment reverses, prices may collapse rapidly, leading to panic selling in the market.

Celebrity effect and social identity symbols

In this era when emotional value is commodified, physical trendy toys and NFTs like Labubu not only exist as collectibles, but also become a brand new social language and identity projection carrier. The endorsement of celebrities and the emotional resonance of the public jointly constructs the symbolic status of trendy toys and NFTs in contemporary culture, making them transcend their original aesthetic, function and collection attributes, and further evolve into cultural symbols that highlight personality, fun and social capital.

Whether Labubu has become a symbol of global popular culture under the frequent "grass planting" of stars such as Rihanna, Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK, or NFT has gradually moved from crypto subculture to mainstream discourse system after the participation of celebrities such as Takashi Murakami, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Justin Bieber and Jay Chou, these phenomena all show that, as super nodes for the dissemination of these IP cultures, their behavior naturally has aesthetic guidance and consumption demonstration effects, and will often quickly increase the cultural value of a trendy toy or NFT project.

And in the age of social media, these collections have also become seen cultural masks. Show off a hidden model or the same model as a celebrity, or set a rare NFT to a Twitter/X avatar. Users are not only displaying their collections, but also conveying their interesting aesthetics, values ​​and even economic strength. In a sense, this is a social behavior and identity statement that uses images, assets and symbols.

Community is productivity: IP's narrative engine and cultural flywheel

The growth path of brands is undergoing a fundamental change. In the past, advertising was the main battlefield for brand expansion. High-frequency exposure and budget stacking were almost equal to the monopoly of users' attention. Now this formula is ineffective, and the power that can truly penetrate noise and hit people's hearts often comes from the community.

Labubu's breaking circle does not rely on overwhelming commercial investment, but a group of ordinary users who love doll culture. They continuously produce UGC content through daily behaviors such as "showing babies", hand-made transformation, producing emoticon packages, photography and check-in. These authentic and warm content spread on social media not only lowers the communication threshold, but also easily stimulates emotional resonance and allows IP to grow naturally in social networks.

PANews Labubu

The same is true in the NFT world. In the process of going mainstream, NFT projects such as CryptoPunks, BAYC, Pudgy Penguins and Azuki are more about achieving cultural spillover through the spontaneous creation of holders. If the scarcity of NFTs gives symbolic capital to participation, then community creation gives these IPs sustained vitality.

This is not only an innovation in communication logic, but also a transfer of narrative power. In such a system, possession is not just the ownership of assets in the physical sense, but also the right to participate and shape the brand narrative. Every copywriting and every picture posted is giving the brand a new semantic level. To put it further, the community itself has become a productivity, and it is also the source of IP narrative, an incubator of creativity, and an amplifier of cultural resonance.

Aesthetics Driven: From Visual Style to Emotional Communication

The popularity of trendy toys is inseparable from its "cute but weird" and "rebellious and healing" visual language. This seemingly contradictory but highly integrated aesthetic traits inject a strong personality into the work and accurately hits the emotional context and inner world of contemporary young people.

Labubu uses the contrasting aesthetic of weirdness and cuteness to bring strong visual impact and emotional freshness, becoming a cultural symbol of Generation Z's self-identity. This visual style is not only an aesthetic choice, but also a narrative strategy. Labubu’s image is both alienated and intimate, marginal and warm, and this paradoxical and complex aesthetic expression appropriately reflects the true portrayal of Generation Z in identity anxiety, emotional internal friction and social alienation. At the same time, Labubu breaks the previous aesthetic system of trendy toys dominated by kawaii sweetness and injects more angular expression dimensions into trendy culture.

This aesthetic logic has also been interpreted in the NFT world. As a new visual species in crypto culture, NFT aesthetic language also transcends simple good-looking or cool, and evolves into a cultural resonance. for example. CryptoPunks pioneered the minimalist pixel style, representing geek spirit and digital fundamentalism; Azuki combines Japanese comic grammar and street trends to build a new generation of identity in the context of Asian culture and globalization; Bored Ape Yacht Club uses street vision that combines cartoony and absurdity to satirize elite culture and traditional authority; Pudgy Penguins conveys healing emotional soothing through round and cute characters... These styles are not randomly stacked, but are concentrated expressions around identity, emotional projection and cultural belonging.

Images become the entrance to the spiritual space, and aesthetic style is social language. Ultimately, whether it is physical trendy toys like Labubu or NFT works on the chain, what really touches people is not just the shape and style, but the ability to implant emotional resonance in the visual with color, texture and style, thereby establishing a deep connection beyond the attributes of the product.