Cultural IQ

PopMart, maker of Labubus, is now worth more than Mattel, Hasbro and Bandai together.

Sydney Sweeney commercial pushed American Eagle Outfitters stock up 40 percent in a single day. Loewe Tomato bag was a social media meme before it was a product. Our economy runs on cultural currency, social status, and commercial appeal of people, products, and companies. We need metrics, like Cultural IQ, to orient ourselves in it. Brands with higher cultural IQs do better: they have a lot of cultural products out in the market, and higher chances that some of them will succeed and become hits. Hits are today made at the intersection of predictive data science, short-form culture labs (TikTok, Reels, Douyin) and AI, which creates multiple versions for every micro-tribe. Cultural intelligence today is very similar to financial intelligence: managing portfolios, making multiple bets, monitoring the mood, connecting the dots, reacting in real-time, and amplifying the early winners.

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