How to Make a Monster Viral: The Genius Viral Marketing Campaign Behind Labubu

We probably would’ve laughed if you told us last year that the hottest accessory of 2025 would be a fuzzy little goblin with serial killer teeth. But here we are, and Labubus are everywhere. Hanging from luxury handbags. Flooding TikTok unboxings. Getting flipped on eBay for a 10x markup.

It’s not just a toy. It’s a brand playbook disguised as a collectible and the epitome of viral success. And the owner of these monsters, Pop Mart, didn’t get lucky; they got smart. 

Labubu’s success is something any digital marketing agency would want to reverse-engineer. This wasn’t an accident. It was the power of viral marketing tactics in action.

1. Blind Boxes = Built-In Addiction

Scarcity sells. That’s Marketing 101. But marketers from Pop Mart didn’t just take notes, they turned the whole thing into a dopamine-fueled slot machine for Gen Z. It’s not just a toy drop… It’s emotional roulette with cuter packaging. Here are the facts of these boxes:

• You don’t know which figure you’ll get.
  
• Rare “secret editions” are extremely hard to find.
  
• People keep buying until they hit the jackpot, or collect them all, or run out of money…

That uncertainty triggers dopamine, drives repeat purchases, and floods social media platforms with viral videos that do the selling for you. All of which are the essentials of virality. The entertainment and excitement people felt opening these packages created some of the most-watched viral content in e-commerce marketing history.

2. One Celebrity. That’s All It Took.

The real spark? K-pop’s Blackpink’s Lisa casually dangling a Labubu keychain. No promo. No hashtag. It was raw, real, and it started with word-of-mouth marketing.

She didn’t appear in a Labubu commercial or promote them on her social media platforms. She simply wore it, and the domino effect started to fall. Fans started to share the content across various social media sites, and suddenly:

• K-pop stars, pop icons, and fashion influencers followed with their own versions of the stuffies and started to create content about it.
  
• The toy became a popular trend and crossed over from “collector” to a “cultural flex.”
  
• Labubu became the next evolution of the Beanie Baby, but cooler, a little scarier, and with big white fangs.

If your product can ride in a celebrity’s purse and still look intentional, your brand is doing something right.

We’re familiar with this as influencer marketing, one of the many smart viral marketing techniques. It leverages a celebrity’s existing social networks to amplify marketing efforts. The magic of influencer marketing is that it doesn’t look like marketing at all when done right. The target audience just sees celebrities use a product or service and the rest is history.

3. Ugly-Cute Is a Market Position

Labubu breaks every rule of cute. That’s the point.

It’s chaotic, creepy, and kind of adorable, perfect for a generation obsessed with individualism and irony. While everyone else was chasing sleek, clean girl, minimalism trends, Pop Mart leaned into the weird.

Their brand voice? Loud, expressive, unapologetically strange. In a feed of curated perfection, Labubu was chaos, and chaos won.

This offbeat aesthetic made it highly sharable—a crucial ingredient for any viral campaign.

4. Drop Culture Done Right

Pop Mart knows exactly how to roll out a product. New Labubus aren’t released, they’re dropped.

Timed releases + live countdowns = instant sellouts.

And once it’s gone? That’s it. No reprints. No mercy. This kind of FOMO fuels social chatter and drives urgency like nothing else. It also fuels the outrageous markup resale prices popping up all over eBay and Facebook.

Whether you’re launching a new product line or building a viral brand from scratch, our social media marketing service experts help you build momentum, craft stories that stick, and scale your reach—fast.

Let’s turn your next drop into the next big thing.

5. From Collectible to Status Symbol

The genius move? Making a $12 toy feel like a $1,200 accessory.

Labubu jumped out of the toy aisle onto luxury bags, fashion editorials, and resale platforms. And Pop Mart positioned their new pop hit as a lifestyle flex.

That repositioning made it socially shareable and status-driven, two things every viral product needs.

The Real Takeaway: You Don’t Need a Giant Ad Budget. You Need a Game Plan.

Labubu didn’t blow up by accident. It was designed to be addictive, trendy, rare, and wearable.

The marketing wasn’t passive. It was:

• Emotionally calculated
  
• Algorithmically smart
  
• Socially engineered
  
• Trend-aligned
  
• And deeply self-aware

In short, Pop Mart didn’t chase culture; they shaped it.

Want help building something with that kind of bite?

Let’s talk strategy. Because viral marketing isn’t magic. It’s math, psychology, and timing. And we know how to work the formula.