Digital Marketing · Branding · Consumer Behavior
Labubu’s marketing turned a collectible character into a cultural phenomenon capable of generating communities, brand collaborations, resale markets, and an enormous social media presence. Behind its distinctive appearance lies an interesting case for understanding how perceived value, scarcity, collecting, and belonging work in contemporary marketing.
How can a small character with long ears and a toothy grin end up hanging from luxury handbags and reaching prices of thousands of dollars on the secondary market?
The answer is not simply in the object itself.
It lies in everything that was built around it.
Labubu is part of The Monsters, a universe created by artist Kasing Lung and marketed globally by Pop Mart.
During 2024 and 2025, the character moved beyond being known primarily within the art toy market and became a much broader phenomenon.
Celebrities, collectors, social media, blind boxes, collaborations, and limited editions all contributed to increasing its visibility.
But reducing its success to “it went viral” means missing the most interesting part.
Labubu’s marketing provides a useful case for analyzing how identity, scarcity, collecting, content, and community can work together to increase a product’s perceived value.
Labubu demonstrates that a product’s value can be built far beyond its material function.
What Is Labubu?
Labubu is a character created by artist Kasing Lung as part of The Monsters universe.
Its aesthetic combines childlike elements with deliberately unusual features: large ears, expressive eyes, and a distinctive smile with pointed teeth.
That design helps explain part of its recognizability.
Labubu does not try to look like a conventionally perfect character.
Its visual identity is distinctive enough to be recognizable even outside its original context.
In branding, that ability has value.
Not because every brand should try to be unusual or provocative, but because differentiation makes recognition easier when it is connected to a consistent identity.
The USD 10,500 Labubu: What Actually Happened
One of the episodes that best illustrates the intensity of the phenomenon occurred in August 2025.
A special-edition Labubu created through a collaboration between Pop Mart and Vans reached approximately USD 10,500 on eBay.
The piece had originally been priced at USD 85.
This means its value in that particular secondary-market transaction reached more than one hundred times its original price.
But that figure needs to be interpreted correctly.
It does not mean that every Labubu was worth USD 10,500 or that buying one automatically represented a profitable investment.
It was a specific, limited piece with particularly high demand among collectors.
An extraordinary resale price shows how much one buyer was willing to pay for a specific piece; it does not automatically establish the value of an entire category.
Why Did Labubu’s Marketing Work?
There is no single explanation for the phenomenon.
Labubu’s marketing combines several factors that reinforce one another:
- a recognizable visual identity;
- collectibility;
- special editions and collaborations;
- distribution through blind boxes;
- scarcity of certain pieces;
- content created spontaneously by buyers;
- celebrity exposure;
- community;
- a secondary market.
Analyzed individually, none of these factors fully explains the phenomenon.
The strength emerges when they work as a system.
1. A Visual Identity Does Not Need to Appeal to Everyone
Labubu is interesting from a design perspective because it challenges a common assumption: that a product needs to be universally appealing in order to become desirable.
Its aesthetic is often described using concepts such as ugly-cute: a combination of the adorable and the strange
That creates personality.
But it would be a mistake to turn this observation into a rule such as “a brand needs to be polarizing to succeed.”
There are successful brands with understated identities and others with extremely expressive ones.
The useful lesson is different:
a recognizable identity is often more valuable than trying to reproduce exactly the same visual codes as every competitor.
2. The Product Also Functions as an Expression of Identity
A person does not necessarily buy a Labubu for its practical utility.
They may buy it because they like the design, want to complete a collection, are participating in a trend, feel connected to the community, or use the object as a form of personal expression.
This happens across many categories.
Clothing, sneakers, cars, technology devices, figures, accessories, and sports brands can all communicate something about the people who use them.
The product then stops competing solely through functional features.
It also competes through meaning.
3. Blind Boxes Turn the Purchase Into an Experience
An important part of Pop Mart’s model is built around blind boxes .
The buyer knows the collection but does not know exactly which figure they will receive until they open the package.
This introduces anticipation into the process.
The experience is no longer simply about choosing a product, paying for it, and receiving it.
There is also a moment of discovery.
This mechanism works particularly well with collectible products because different pieces can have different levels of availability.
4. Scarcity Can Increase Perceived Value
Limited editions and hard-to-find pieces can acquire special value for certain collectors.
When demand significantly exceeds availability, a secondary market can also develop.
The USD 10,500 Labubu is an extreme example.
However, there is an important difference here between genuine scarcity and artificially manipulated scarcity.
A limited edition may result from a collaboration, a specific production run, or a design decision.
Creating false scarcity solely to pressure someone into making a purchase can damage trust.
Urgency may secure a transaction.
Trust determines whether there is a relationship after it.
5. Unboxing Turns the Product Into Content
Blind boxes have another characteristic that makes them particularly compatible with social media: they create an easily shareable visual moment.
Opening a box and discovering which figure is inside creates a simple narrative:
anticipation → opening → reveal → reaction.
This sequence works particularly well in short-form audiovisual content.
The product, therefore, does not simply end up in the buyer’s hands.
It can immediately become content for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or other platforms.
This helps create a cycle:
product → experience → content → discovery → new buyers.
This behavior connects with a broader transformation in how we discover products and information. Social media and video are increasingly functioning as spaces for search and discovery, something I explore in greater depth in this analysis of Social Search.
6. Celebrities Amplified a Phenomenon That Already Had an Identity
Labubu’s presence among public figures helped increase its international visibility.
But there is a difference between using a celebrity to try to manufacture relevance and having a recognizable product adopted within popular culture.
Exposure can accelerate discovery.
It does not replace the need to have something audiences want to remember, share, or own.
That is why the lesson should not simply be:
“We need to hire influencers.”
The more interesting question is:
does our product have enough distinctive elements for someone to want to voluntarily incorporate it into their own self-expression?
7. Labubu Does Not Just Sell Figures: It Also Enables Collecting
An individual product can satisfy a need and complete a transaction.
A collectible system introduces continuity.
Different series, characters, variations, collaborations, and special pieces allow one purchase to lead to another.
This changes the relationship with the product.
The consumer can move from asking:
“Do I want to buy this?”
to:
“Which piece am I missing?”
That shift is particularly powerful in categories where collecting is a natural part of the experience.
8. Community Increases the Product’s Meaning
Collecting also generates conversation.
People display pieces, compare collections, trade figures, search for specific editions, and share unboxings.
This means that part of Labubu’s value does not exist solely between Pop Mart and the buyer.
It also exists between the buyers themselves.
An audience receives content from a brand. A community also creates meaning around it.
This distinction is important for any marketing strategy.
Building a community is not simply about creating a WhatsApp, Discord, or Facebook group.
There needs to be a reason for people to want to connect with one another.
9. The Secondary Market Can Reinforce the Perception of Exclusivity
When certain pieces begin trading at prices above their original retail value, another layer of meaning emerges.
The product may begin to be perceived as scarce, desirable, or special.
But this also requires caution.
A resale market can be extremely volatile.
Prices depend on demand, rarity, condition, authenticity, and trends that can change.
That is why we should not confuse a collectible object with a conventional financial investment.
From a marketing perspective, the interesting point is not to promise returns.
It is to observe how the perception of scarcity and demand can change the economic and cultural meaning of a product.
What Can Brands Learn From Labubu’s Marketing?
Literally copying Pop Mart’s model would make little sense for most companies.
A consulting firm, restaurant, technology company, or personal brand does not need to start selling blind boxes.
What is useful is identifying the principles behind Labubu’s marketing and determining which ones can be applied coherently in other contexts.
Build Recognizable Elements
A brand should be able to develop its own codes: tone, design, narrative, product, experience, or way of communicating.
Differentiation does not mean doing something extravagant.
It means avoiding becoming an interchangeable copy of the competition.
Turn the Purchase Into an Experience
The relationship with a customer includes much more than the transaction itself.
Discovery, purchase, delivery, packaging, implementation, customer service, and follow-up all communicate something.
Asking what customers feel and what happens during those stages can reveal opportunities that a strategy focused solely on advertising may overlook.
Give People Something They Want to Share
User-generated content works particularly well when there is a natural reason to create it.
It could be a transformation, an experience, a surprise, a result, a design, or a story.
We do not always need to ask:
“Share it on your social media.”
Instead, we can ask:
what part of our experience would be interesting enough for someone to want to share it without being asked?
Create a Sense of Belonging Instead of Simply Accumulating Followers
A follower count represents potential reach.
It does not necessarily represent a community.
Communities emerge when there is shared identity, conversation, participation, and some form of connection between members.
A brand capable of facilitating those relationships can develop something much harder to copy than an advertising campaign.
What We Should Not Copy From Labubu’s Marketing
Analyzing a successful case does not mean turning every characteristic into a universal formula.
Not every company needs:
- deliberately polarizing products;
- scarcity;
- blind boxes;
- collectibles;
- celebrities;
- resale markets.
Trying to incorporate these tactics without any connection to the product can produce exactly the opposite effect.
A strategy begins with understanding the problem, the market, and the audience.
The tool comes afterward.
The Real Lesson From Labubu Is Not the USD 10,500 Price Tag
The price reached by an extraordinarily rare piece makes for an attention-grabbing story.
But it is not the main reason Labubu’s marketing is interesting.
What matters is observing how different layers can transform the perception of an object:
design + identity + scarcity + experience + content + community + culture.
When these dimensions reinforce one another, consumers stop evaluating a product solely by the materials used to make it.
They begin to evaluate what it represents.
The hardest brands to replace are not necessarily those that offer the most features, but those that succeed in building meaning their customers come to see as their own.
Labubu may stop being a trend someday. Every trend eventually changes.
The more enduring lesson is this: a product can become much more than an object when identity, experience, and community begin to work together.