The brand
you built.

Every ad, pack and page you ship lands in one place on the Hotspex Map.

The brand
they post.

Now people you never briefed are shipping it too.

The Hotspex Map

One map of what people feel about a brand.

Eight zones of human motivation and 177 emotion, personality and value words, each at a fixed place. It shows where a brand sits in people’s minds, and where it could credibly go.

15 yearsguiding Fortune 100 brands

1M+consumer interviews behind it

35+countries

Two of the world’s largest advertisers call it their unified theory of brand building.

Because it keeps a brand consistent: every ad, pack, page and post measured on one Map. Consistency is what drives sales and profit. The most consistent brands get +28% more very large business effects.

IPA × System1, The Magic of Compound Creativity, 4,164 ads.

$88Madditional revenue for Molson Canadian, and ten years of share decline halted

34Mhouseholds gained for Sprite

Hotspex case studies.

1

brand. One meaning.

“I’m absolutely convinced that the times of big corporate big brand messages are gone.”

Fernando Fernandez, CEO, Unilever. CAGNY 2026, via Marketing Week

“We must be intentional about putting digital at the core of every connection with consumers.”

Henrique Braun, then incoming CEO, now CEO, The Coca-Cola Company. February 2026, via BeverageDaily

300,000

creators, at one company.

Unilever works with about 300,000. In beauty alone it went from 75,000 to 180,000 in a single year.

Digiday · Marketing Week

2,500+

content creators supporting Coca-Cola’s FIFA World Cup 2026 activations. Over 9 billion views.

The Coca-Cola Company, Q2 2026 earnings release, 28 July 2026

The biggest marketers have made the call. The open question is where all those creators take the brand.

Mark Ritson
“Differentiation is not about uniqueness, it’s about difference.”
Mark Ritson, speaking at a Marketing Week webinar (reported 31 July 2023). Add more positioning concepts, he warns, and “the more you dilute your chance to stand for anything.”

Every brand has a Right Space.

The place on the Map the brand’s own emotions, personality and values add up to. Singular brands build it in layers, then ship it everywhere.

  1. 1
    Core emotion

    Inspiring 57%, Interesting 19%, Fun 16%

  2. 2
    Personality

    Inspiring, Determined, Ambitious, Open-minded, Confident

  3. 3
    Values

    “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

  4. 4
    Archetype

    The Hero (directional)

  5. 5
    Product benefits

    Self-expression and status: what wearing it says about you

  6. 6
    Logo and assets

    The Swoosh. “Just Do It.” The athlete.

Emotion and personality: Nike’s own words, placed on the Hotspex Map. Values: Nike mission page. Archetype and product benefits: Hotspex hypotheses, not measured.

Nike’s Right Space: Inspiring. Built from Nike’s own words: its mission and brand pages, placed on the Map. 14 words make up most of it.

When every layer lines up, the brand is singular. And singular pays.

Consistency compounds.

+27%

more very large brand effects for the most consistent brands. +28% more very large business effects: sales, profit, share.

2×

the market-share growth per point of excess share of voice (1.8 against 0.8). Less consistent brands would need an estimated £3.47bn more media over five years to keep up.

IPA × System1, The Magic of Compound Creativity. 4,164 ads, 56 brands, 2018 to 2024.

Creators can pay back. If they carry the brand.

99 → 151

creator ROI index, short term against long term. Short term, about average. Long term, half as much again: the return is the brand that remains. IPA, 220 campaigns.

<1 in 15

pieces of creator content deliver both strong engagement and brand building. Kantar, 15,000+ creator assets, 19 countries.

2 to 4

brand cues in the first two seconds is what works. Sound and visuals together double early brand recognition. System1 × WPP Media × TikTok, 1,217 ads.

Your brand. Right where you left it.

Every post chases attention.

Together, they pull the brand apart.

63%

of 608 brands: what creators say lands well away from what the brand’s own ads, pack and site say. In half, a different zone of the Map entirely.

Across 9,042 US executions, creator-led social is pulled toward Fun, away from where brands build.

Where the brand is going. Where creators pull it.

Every number is how much of what gets said is the brand’s Right Space: its own emotion, personality and value words.

Nike

Right Space built from Nike’s own words: Inspiring, Determined, Ambitious, Open-minded, Confident, Passionate.

63%of what Nike’s own ads say is its Right Space

13%of what its creators say. 23 of 41 posts use none of its Right Space words.

Nike’s ads speak its Right Space. Its creators mostly don’t. These are posts Nike seeded, gifted or paid for, and how much of each is Right Space:

  1. 0%A brand-seeded TikTok, product-style video. Reads: Average, Like you, Practical.
  2. 0%A gifted PR haul. Reads: Friendly, Like you, Happy, Superficial.
  3. 19%A paid partnership reveal. Reads: Emotional, Sincere, Ambitious.

Axe

Right Space built from Axe’s own words: Confident, Youthful, Masculine, Attractive, Open-minded, Different.

44%of what Axe’s own ads say is its Right Space

37%of what its creators say. 2 of 38 posts use none of its Right Space words.

The counter-case. Axe gives every creator the same place to stand, and most of them stand in its Right Space:

  1. 82%Brett Neustrom, Black Vanilla date-night post, paid. Attractive, Youthful, Confident, Masculine.
  2. 37%Emily Zugay, limited-edition can launch, paid. Witty and a joker: funny, but lighter on confidence.

Vaseline

Right Space built from Vaseline’s own words: Nurturing, Sincere, Good, Knowledgeable, Competent, Kind.

18%of what Vaseline’s own ads say is its Right Space

12%of what its creators say. 23 of 40 posts use none of its Right Space words.

Vaseline’s own words spread wide, so even its ads only half-find them. The creators who land in its Right Space are the ones who explain or tell a personal story:

  1. 42%Jen Chae, “officially a Vaseline OG”, paid. Loyal, Sincere, Knowledgeable.
  2. 42%Jane the Chemist, slugging explainer, posted by Vaseline. Knowledgeable, Competent, Reliable.
  3. 13%Jen Chae, Brow Tamer reveal, same Thailand trip, posted a month later, paid. Creative, Interesting.

Right Space: the words each brand uses about itself on its mission and brand pages, placed blind on the Hotspex Map (the words making up 80% of the weight). Fit: the share of each post’s placed words that are Right Space words. Competitor overlap not shown. Placements are AI blind reads (three passes) of captions and coverage, not the videos; accuracy is unmeasured for these categories. Hotspex creator map studies, September 2026.

Imagine your boss had a different personality every morning.

How long would you stay?

That’s what a brand feels like when every creator is left to guess.

Find out where yours are taking it.

We map your Right Space, then place every creator post against it, on the same Hotspex Map as your ads, pack and site. Then you brief creators to the space your brand should own.

See your brand’s creators

600+ brands, their creators placed on the same Map as their ads, in the North America Singularity league.