MILAN — There’s a new ranking in town and Gucci leads it.
The Kering-owned brand topped the inaugural Cultural Currency Index, or CCI, a data-driven metric designed to quantify how cultural engagement translates into measurable market momentum.
The index was presented here on Thursday by Annex, the analytics-driven brand consultancy cofounded in 2022 by fashion industry veteran Miah Sullivan, and was built in collaboration with AI-powered creator and social intelligence platform WeArisma.
Developed over two years, the CCI aims to give brands an empirical readout of how social, search and site traffic activity correspond with real economic indicators, from consumer demand to share-price performance.
“For more than two decades as a CMO, I worked for various companies and in many of them they saw marketing as a cost…but I have always believed that if marketing could accurately quantify the value to shareholders at companies, they would start to see it as an investment,” said Sullivan, whose previous stints include serving as senior vice president of global marketing and communications for Hugo Boss, among others.
She recalled how she became frustrated in her previous gigs as she spent her time justifying to companies the marketing investment that was driving demand for their own brands. “I could see campaign energy, but I could not credibly connect it back to the commercial ripple that followed. And the commercial ripple did follow. Every board meeting came down to the same question: ‘But how do we know all this heat is driving growth?’ Even when we went from $1.8 billion to $3.6 billion in a period of 18 months through sheer marketing force, this was still the question in the boardroom.”
“Marketing has always been the most powerful, yet least measurable lever of enterprise growth,” Sullivan said. “We have lacked a credible number to defend our actions and our impact. As a result, upper funnel budgets that build narrative have shifted to lower funnel projects that create short-term spikes but weaken the long-term relevance of your brand.”
Hence, she spearheaded the development of a new metric, one that goes beyond media value. “Media value measures exposure, which is not impact. It’s misleading and damaging to the long-term health of the business. In fact, we see in the data the brands that chase media value are the brands that drive the least purchase intent,” Sullivan said. “Media value assumes attention equals influence and visibility equals value. We know that’s wrong. A viral post does not guarantee preference.…Exposure has always been an easy count. Impact is far harder to prove. And this is where our work began.”
For the inaugural report, CCI assessed 20 fashion companies showing at Milan Fashion Week last month. Data was drawn from 11 platforms in 50 countries, including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Weibo, Douyin, RED (Xiaohongshu), Google, Baidu, Similarwe and Yahoo!Finance.
“We compared the 10 days before the shows to the 10 days during it, and this is important because most of the data that’s out there related to a fashion show, they look at the same seven-day period for all the brands. So if you show later in the week, your numbers are going to be less,” said Sullivan about using brand-specific windows to avoid first-mover bias and ensure fair comparison among brands.
“We then ran a correlation analysis with the 10 of the 20 companies on the list that were publicly traded for the same periods. We didn’t just look at how the share price increased, but specifically at how the share price on each day outperformed the market,” said Sullivan. “What we found was statistically significant: a correlation coefficient of 0.63 [that] indicates that the higher your CCI score, the more your stock price outperformed the market. In simple terms, when cultural heat rises, market performance rises.”
In general, the CCI measured companies according to three pillars: brand popularity, brand involvement and purchase intent, providing a holistic look at both social traction and economic potential. Each brand received a score of between 0 and 100.
Gucci ranked first with a 100 score. Its presentation of “The Tiger” film generated significant engagement and search activity, further boosted by a see now, buy now campaign for a limited time period on a selection of stores that proved digital spectacle can translate directly into sales.
Sullivan said brands that owned their narrative had the strongest correlation to purchase intent, which was surprising for her as she thought “that the creators would have driven more of an impact.”
“Gucci is a really good example of that,” said Sullivan. “If you look at the total impressions delivered by brand channels and those delivered by the creator channels, 80 percent of the impressions for the 20 brands studied came from creators. In the case of Gucci, 40 percent of their impressions came from their branded channels. They understood that social media is an entertainment platform first, they invested a lot in the entertainment narrative and that proved well for them.”
CCI data showed that the brand generated 562 million impressions across platforms, 663 million total views and 516,000 total reshares. Roughly 15 percent of all social posts from the 20 brands referenced Gucci and Caro Daur’s TikTok achieved 11 million views, becoming the most viewed single piece of Gucci’s content across all platforms during fashion week.
As for the purchase intent pillar specifically, the brand ranked fifth in search, with a 9.1 percent increase in site traffic and a 10.3 percent rise in Google shopping-related searches versus an average of 4.2 percent. A small decrease on Baidu indicated that Western market traction slightly outpaced Asian response.
It was an encouraging first step for Gucci’s new phase under the creative direction of Demna, whose mandate is to restore desirability and growth to the brand. Parent company Kering has been working to stem the hemorrhage at Gucci, which posted another 25 percent decline in organic sales in the second quarter, while consumers waited for Demna’s debut presentation and the see now, buy now products in stores.
Such a combination, as well as the disruptive move of forgoing a traditional show format for a film premiere replete with A-list celebrity attendance and effective digital storytelling proved that a brand’s success now also relies on its ability to generate cultural events that transcend the runway.
Gucci was followed by Fendi, Bottega Veneta, Prada and The Attico in the ranking.
Fendi got a 92.9 score and secured a top engagement performance through its partnership with Bang Chan of Stray Kids, an activation that drove conversation on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. The brand ranked first in purchase intent, recording a 17.8 percent increase in site traffic, 10.6 percent rise in Google shopping-related searches and 8 percent on Baidu.
Bottega Veneta showed balanced strength across all three pillars and earned a 88.9 score. Anticipation for Louise Trotter’s debut was built organically, culminating in a show that delivered a flawless livestream and strong creator presence. The brand’s YouTube show alone generated 16 million views, accounting for 92.2 percent of all fashion show impressions on that platform during the period monitored. Also in the case of Bottega Veneta, the involvement of brand ambassador Kim Nam Joon of BTS was pivotal, with his content generating 8 percent of total brand impressions.
Ditto for Prada, which represented 17.5 percent of all fashion week content, generating 677 million total impressions, with ambassador group Enhypen’s official accounts alone delivered 34 percent of impressions.
Competing with more established fashion houses was The Attico, which proved that viral precision can outperform scale. By centering its communication on a tightly curated group of high-impact creators and amplifying a single product — the new La Passeggiata mini bag launched with a see now, buy now format — the brand achieved great purchase intent and sales conversion.
It outperformed the likes of Diesel, Roberto Cavalli and Jil Sander in brand popularity, while as for purchase intent, it ranked second in search, with a 14.8 percent increase in site traffic and a 28 percent rise in Google shopping-related searches, far above the 4.2 percent industry average.
“What’s really interesting is that you don’t have to be the biggest spender to achieve the result,” said Sullivan, comparing The Attico’s performance to the one of Dolce & Gabbana, which ranked sixth.
Sullivan highlighted how Dolce & Gabbana engineered a Hollywood live set that achieved global viral status by having Meryl Streep and the cast of the sequel to “The Devil Wears Prada,” but such an exposure overshadowed the collection.
“Actually what happened with that moment was that a lot of that search and consumer activity that drives purchase intent shifted into the movie,” said Sullivan, underscoring how the search of movie-related content “was 80 percent higher than the search lift related to purchasing terms on Dolce & Gabbana.”
Rounding out the top 10 list were also Boss, Jil Sander, Tod’s and Max Mara.
The study highlighted the pivotal role of Asian creators and platforms and the importance of having a curated front row to maximize visibility and engage target audiences as well as the high impact of see now, buy now moments.
These add to the key role of speed, as Sullivan pointed to how the first 48 to 72 hours after a runway show remain critical for visibility, engagement and virality. Brands that posted promptly within this time window recorded significant increases in search activity and site traffic, as seen with The Attico, Jil Sander and Fendi.
This was only CCI’s first public release. Sullivan said Annex will refine and expand the model over the next year ahead covering events in Paris, New York and Shanghai.
“The greatest potential lies within what this metric reveals over time because as we collect all of this data we can start to do regression analysis with actual business results. So over time, this loop between culture and commerce will get tighter and tighter,” said Sullivan. “Our goal is a consistent, transparent framework to evaluate cultural momentum with the same confidence as financial performance. For too long, cultural currency has been admired but not measured. Quantifying it reveals its economic power.…Culture is capital, there is value in this,” she said.