Labubu in the showcase, NFT on the screen, unlocking the magic of IP emotional marketing.

Author: Nancy, PANews

A cute and ugly little monster Labubu quietly stands in the display window, with fans outside lining up in a long queue just to get that surprise which might release a hidden version. Similarly, a series of digital images are minted as NFTs on the blockchain, invisible in physical form, yet sold out in just a few minutes.

One is real and tangible, while the other exists only on screen. These two forms of IP seem to be in two worlds: reality and virtuality. However, in an era of emotion-driven consumption, they grow, explode, and recreate myths with astonishingly similar logic. Behind this is a medium of community interaction, a projection of individual identity, and a cultural and emotional container birthed by the IP era.

Emotional Resonance: It's not just the products that connect.

The charm of Labubu goes far beyond its furry exterior and unique design; it is an extension of the user's inner world, or perhaps the hidden monster image from a childhood doodle book, reflecting a deep-seated sense of loneliness yet complexity within the self. This seemingly simple doll actually creates genuine emotional companionship for users, filling the longing for belonging and love—just as psychologist Maslow pointed out the "need for belonging and love."

At the same time, Labubu satisfies the psychological phenomenon of collecting. Collecting behavior is regarded in psychology as a manifestation of a sense of control. When users accumulate and display Labubu dolls, the sense of achievement they gain enhances their sense of ownership, which in turn strengthens their self-identity and inner satisfaction. Behind each doll lies a unique story: whether it’s the excitement of queuing up at midnight to buy them, or the emotional resonance shared with friends while showcasing the collection, these moments become precious emotional treasures.

NFTs also stimulate a deep sense of community belonging, fulfilling people's social needs for acceptance and recognition. What players collect is no longer just a string of cold codes, or a symbol of faith for first-time encounters with the crypto world, nor merely memories forged together with like-minded individuals.

Based on the emotional resonance of ownership and belonging, it not only satisfies the internal needs of users but also serves as an intangible bond connecting users and brands. At the same time, the stimulation of this emotion opens up new growth paths for brands and creators. By deeply cultivating users' emotional experiences and building multi-dimensional cultural identity and community belonging, long-term loyalty and sustained participation from users can be achieved.

IP Narrative: More than just assets, it's a container for stories.

In the current wave of cultural consumption, a character is never just an image. The core of a truly vibrant IP lies in its ability to build a narrative universe that people are willing to immerse themselves in.

Labubu is a case in point. As a core member of The Monsters series, Labubu may have started out as a big-eyed monster with pointed ears, but as it gradually developed a personality, companions, and growth trajectory, it grew from a doll to a character, weaving a diverse and rich virtual network with other characters from the same series, such as ZIMOMO and SkullPanda. The construction of this universe relies on continuous content output, scene-based immersive experience layout, and deep participation mechanism of user emotions, which also enables Labubu's image to be extended to various physical carriers such as offline theme parks, limited plush toys, blind boxes, and assembled building blocks.

This idea of narrative IP construction is also obvious in the NFT field. NFT projects have long realized that what can really impress users and maintain the community is not a single scarcity, but the story behind the characters. For example, BAYC continues to expand the boundaries of its "ape universe" by launching diversified products such as the metaverse, fashion clothing, games, and music. Azuki enriches the user's touchpoint experience with physical comics and trendy peripherals; Pudgy Penguins has broken through the Web3 circle, entering the traditional retail scene with children's books and offline toys, emphasizing the cute healing attributes of penguin characters and the emotional narrative of accompanying growth. What these cases have in common is that they have all made the leap from visual symbols to cultural roles, making NFTs a character-driven narrative medium rather than just an on-chain asset.

From this perspective, those IP universes with long-form narrative structures and sustained content production capabilities truly possess the cultural potential to transcend time and reach a broader audience.

Blind box gameplay: The game of scarcity and surprise.

The blind box mechanism is a psychological game based on probability, which creates uncertainty through artificial means, allowing products to transcend simple functional attributes and be endowed with emotional value and trading potential. It creates scarcity through probability, stimulates emotions through scarcity, and ultimately drives the formation of market value through emotions. The core of this mechanism is to make players obsessed with the "next time" through repeated attempts, a psychological state referred to as "intermittent reinforcement" in psychology.

Labubu's innovative gameplay combined with the blind box mechanism gives consumers a sense of surprise and challenge. And the hidden model pushes ordinary goods into the category of collectibles and even assets. Every time the box is opened, it is not only an emotional consumption, but also a concrete probability game emotion. A similar approach has been introduced in the NFT space, where randomness and scarcity are written on-chain in the form of smart contracts. Each Mint process is essentially a digital gacha, where 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 unsealed or a rare NFT is revealed, the dissemination and emotional amplification mechanisms on social networks are activated, transforming the rarity into a hard currency after being quickly priced by the market, from sharing pictures in friend circles to bidding in the secondary market.

Premium: Market pricing of FOMO sentiment

A hidden edition of Labubu has soared to over ten thousand yuan, and a rare attribute NFT has surged to several million or even tens of millions of dollars. Behind these astonishing figures, these are not just simple price movements, but rather the marketization of emotional value.

FOMO is one of the core emotions driving premiums. When buyers see others making high-priced transactions, it often triggers their impulse to rush in. At this point, many buyers no longer make judgments purely based on the intrinsic value of the artwork, but rather act based on the psychological expectation of seizing the opportunity or not being left out of the market, thereby creating a positive feedback loop in pricing that further drives up premiums. This behavior is essentially a psychological bet on potential future value. Furthermore, market consensus is reinforced by factors such as continuously increasing transaction prices and discussions on social media, subsequently driving prices higher.

Some speculators/resellers, and even officials, are well aware of the FOMO psychology and intentionally create market hotspots, such as manipulating prices, buybacks or limited releases, hype promotion, and creating scarcity to stimulate purchasing desire, resulting in a bubble phenomenon where prices soar in the short term.

Although emotion-driven trading brings huge premiums and market activity, it is also accompanied by extremely high volatility risks. Once sentiment reverses, prices can collapse quickly, leading to panic selling in the market.

The celebrity effect and social identity symbols

In this era where emotional value is commodified, physical trendy toys like Labubu and NFTs exist not only as collectibles but also become a brand new social language and identity projection medium. The endorsement of celebrities and the emotional resonance with the public collectively construct the symbolic status of trendy toys and NFTs in contemporary culture, allowing them to transcend their original aesthetic, functional, and collectible attributes, and further evolve into cultural symbols that showcase individuality, taste, and social capital.

Whether it is Labubu's rise to become a symbol of global pop culture due to the frequent "planting" of stars such as Rihanna, Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK's Lisa and Rosé, or the gradual transformation of NFT from crypto subculture to mainstream discourse due to the participation of celebrities such as Takashi Murakami, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Justin Bieber and Jay Chou, these phenomena show that celebrities are the super nodes of these IP culture dissemination. Its behavior naturally has an aesthetic guidance and consumption demonstration effect, which often quickly enhances the cultural gold content of a trendy toy or NFT project.

In the era of social media, these collectibles have also become cultural masks that are seen. By showcasing a hidden version or a celebrity's Labubu, or setting a rare NFT as a Twitter/X avatar, users are not only displaying their collectibles but also conveying their aesthetic tastes, values, and even economic strength. In a sense, this is a social behavior and identity statement that uses images, assets, and symbols to express consumer behavior.

Community is Productivity: The Narrative Engine of IP and the Cultural Flywheel

The growth path of brands is undergoing a fundamental transformation. In the past, advertising was the main battlefield for brand expansion, where high-frequency exposure and budget stacking almost equated to a monopoly on user attention. Today, this formula is becoming ineffective; the true power to penetrate the noise and resonate with people's hearts often comes from the community.

Labubu's breakout is not reliant on extensive commercial investment, but rather on a group of ordinary users who love doll culture. Through daily activities such as "showing off their dolls," DIY modifications, creating emoticons, and photography check-ins, they continuously produce UGC content. This genuine and warm content spreads on social media, not only lowering the barriers to communication but also easily sparking emotional resonance, allowing the IP to grow naturally within social networks.

The same is true in the world of NFTs. NFT projects like CryptoPunks, BAYC, Pudgy Penguins, and Azuki have achieved mainstream status largely through the spontaneous creations of their holders, resulting in cultural overflow. If the scarcity of NFTs bestows symbolic capital upon participation, then community creation gives these IPs a lasting vitality.

This is not only an innovation in the logic of dissemination but also a transfer of narrative power. In such a system, ownership is not merely about physical asset possession but also about the participation and shaping rights in brand narratives. Every piece of copy, every shared image adds new layers of meaning to the brand. Furthermore, the community itself has become a productive force, serving as a source of IP narratives, an incubator for creativity, and an amplifier of cultural resonance.

Aesthetic Driven: From Visual Style to Emotional Communication

The popularity of潮玩 is inseparable from its "cute yet grotesque" and "rebellious yet healing" visual language. This seemingly contradictory yet highly integrated aesthetic quality injects a strong personality into the works and precisely resonates with the emotional pulse and inner world of contemporary youth.

With the contrasting aesthetics of grotesque and cuteness, Labubu brings a strong visual impact and emotional freshness, and has become a cultural symbol of Gen Z's self-identity. This visual style is not only an aesthetic choice, but also a narrative strategy. Labubu's image is at once alienated and intimate, borderline and warm, and this contradictory and complex aesthetic expression aptly reflects the true portrayal of Gen Z's identity anxiety, emotional internal friction and social alienation. At the same time, Labubu breaks the previous kawaii-style sweetness dominated by the aesthetic system of trendy toys, and injects a more angular dimension of expression into pop culture.

This aesthetic logic is also played out in the NFT world. As a new visual species in crypto culture, the aesthetic language of NFT has also evolved into a cultural resonance beyond simply being good-looking or cool. Like what. CryptoPunks pioneered with a minimalist pixel style, representing geek spirit and digital fundamentalism; Azuki blends Japanese grammar with street trends to construct a new generation of identities in the context of Asian culture and globalization. Bored Ape Yacht Club, on the other hand, satirizes elite culture and traditional authority with cartoonish and absurdist street visuals. Pudgy Penguins, on the other hand, conveys a healing emotion through the mellow and cute characters...... These styles are not random accumulations, but condensed expressions around identity, emotional projection, and cultural belonging.

Images become the gateway to the spiritual space, and aesthetic style is the language of social interaction. Ultimately, whether it is tangible trendy toys like Labubu or NFT works on the chain, what truly moves people is not just the shape and style, but the ability to embed emotional resonance in visuals through color, texture, and style, thereby establishing a deep connection that transcends the attributes of mere commodities.