The "Study Penguin" in Harbin Polar Park, the "Success is Instant" green horse gift box from the Gansu Provincial Museum, the canvas bag designed in Datong Ancient City inspired by the toothy Bodhisattva of Huayan Temple, and the unique local cultural and creative refrigerator magnets... Do you have any of these out-of-the-world cultural IPs in your suitcase when you return from vacation?
During the National Day holiday that just passed, cultural IP once again set off a craze for converting emotional value into physical consumption. During the National Day holiday in the first year of the “15th Five-Year Plan”, this craze became a vivid footnote of “empowering economic and social development with culture”.
As many observers have pointed out, cultural IP is now moving from "single product hits" to "scenario-based and integrated". During this year’s National Day holiday, a fashion brand’s nearly 3,000 square meters of exhibition space transformed the image of fashion into an accessible and touristy scene; a beverage company integrated beverage consumption with ancient-style check-in and cultural and creative shopping, driving a significant increase in customer flow from surrounding merchants. Tourists are no longer satisfied with “buying peripherals”, but are willing to pay for immersive experiences. This type of business innovation not only shows the huge potential of new consumption scenarios, but also opens up a new communication carrier for China’s excellent traditional culture. It has become a vivid practice of “actively promoting the integrated development of multiple business formats” proposed in the “15th Five-Year Plan” in the field of cultural tourism consumption.
The material cost of a cultural and creative ornament, a theme badge, or an IP doll may not be high, but the historical culture, emotional sustenance, and aesthetic value it carries cannot be replaced by ordinary industrial products. Take the National Museum of China's Fengguan refrigerator magnet as an example. From its launch in 2024 to July this year, sales have exceeded 3.4 million pieces, driving the sales of more than 70 cultural and creative products in the Fengguan series to exceed 300 million yuan, setting a sales record for single products and series of cultural and creative products in the past 20 years. How can a refrigerator magnet that sells for a few dozen yuan leverage a business worth hundreds of millions of yuan? The answer lies in a simple sentence from the consumer: "The money is well spent, and I feel closer to the cultural relics."
This is the "premium password" of cultural IP - consumers are not only buying cultural creations, but also "the places I have been to" and "the culture I identify with". This also reflects that the current daily consumption of Chinese people is leaping from basic functional consumption to spiritual needs consumption. This leap is driving the iterative upgrading of related industries and continuously enriching the supply of cultural products.
At present, the in-depth value development of cultural IP is becoming a new growth point for the integrated development of cultural industry and real economy. For example, the new Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan City, Sichuan receives more than 6 million tourists on average every year, and its annual cultural and creative sales exceed 200 million yuan. This driving effect is particularly obvious during the National Day holiday this year: about 800 "Bronze Chirp" dolls are sold on average every day, and the cumulative sales across the entire network since its launch have exceeded 300,000. Guanghan City also took advantage of this opportunity to launch more than 20 series of activities such as Mask Culture Week, with more than 150,000 participants, and a total of more than 3 million yuan in consumer vouchers issued, stimulating consumption of nearly 100 million yuan.
It can be seen that a successful cultural IP can not only create commercial value by itself, but also drive the coordinated growth of manufacturing, retail, tourism, logistics and other industries, forming a complete chain from cultural attraction and tourism agglomeration to consumption-driven and economic growth. This is a realistic interpretation of the integrated development of "culture and tourism + all industries" and "all industries + culture and tourism".
According to reports released by relevant institutions, it is expected that by the end of the “15th Five-Year Plan”, the scale of China’s cultural and creative market will exceed 10 trillion yuan. From a cultural IP to an entire industrial chain, from a holiday hotspot to a new economic growth point - "Empowering economic and social development with culture" clearly stated in the "15th Five-Year Plan" is constantly being reflected in reality.
