Algorithms, viral moments and AI platforms are rewriting the rulebook of brand building. Trends are born and fizzle out at lightning speed on TikTok, while customers are increasingly turning to AI chatbots for shopping advice on what to buy and where to buy it. These new dynamics determine which brands capture attention — and how long they keep it.
Traditional brand trackers often look backwards and quickly become outdated, or focus solely on measuring online noise, offering little insight into how effectively a brand is building genuine connections with potential customers. Our new tool, BoF Insights Brand Pulse, is designed to address these shortcomings and provide a holistic dashboard of brand performance today.
The BoF Insights Brand Pulse Index
Today, we are pleased to share the first iteration of The BoF Insights Brand Pulse Index — a benchmark built using data and analysis from our dashboard. The Index assesses not only how discoverable a brand is online, but also how consistently its identity is understood, how its value is debated, and how deeply it is woven into the everyday lives of customers and broader culture.
The Index evaluates 100 leading fashion brands between January 1 and August 31, 2025 across five key dimensions:
● Discoverability: Do people find the brand via algorithms, AI and search?
● Identity: Do people understand and align with the brand’s values?
● Value: Do people believe the brand gets the price-quality equation right?
● Connection: Do people engage and resonate with the brand?
● Love: Do people feel emotionally attached to the brand and do they advocate for it?
Drawing on signals from TikTok, Instagram, Google Search and AI chatbots including ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, the Index blends quantitative digital data with qualitative consumer conversation to show how effectively brands perform. Brands that top the Index are optimising how they appear across social, search and AI platforms and transforming digital discoverability into genuine connection and lasting brand love.
BoF Insights Brand Pulse Index: Luxury
There are positive and negative relationships between Brand Pulse metrics. Some brand dynamics reinforce one another, while others create natural tensions that require leaders to make trade-offs and pull different levers to grow.
For example, Value is positively linked to Connection. This means that across all the luxury brands studied, brands with higher Value scores tend to have higher Connection scores. When consumers believe a luxury brand is worth spending money on, they are more likely to have emotional attachments to it.
- Louis Vuitton
- Saint Laurent
- Hermés
- Chanel
- Versace
- Loewe
- Chloé
- Miu Miu
- Tom Ford
- Brunello Cucinelli
Louis Vuitton leads the luxury Index, with particularly strong performance in Discoverability, Connection, Love and Value. As one of the most recognisable and searched-for luxury brands in the world, it is perceived as a brand worth spending money on. Over a third of all conversations about the brand in the assessment period related to price, quality and worth — with nearly 90 percent positive in sentiment — showing that its high prices are justified by perceptions of craftsmanship and prestige.
Chanel leads the luxury BoF Insights Brand Pulse Index in Love, demonstrating a high level of emotional attachment few of its peers achieve. Part of Chanel’s success is driven by the fact that it is good at selling desirability in different forms to different audiences, whether through a $50 lipstick or $200,000 couture gown. Chanel ranks second of 35 luxury brands for earned media sentiment (a component of Love) and is also the top performer for LLM Love, which measures the strength of positive earned media.
BoF Insights Brand Pulse Index: High Street
- Gap
- J.Crew
- Uniqlo
- Abercrombie & Fitch
- COS
- Levi’s
- Old Navy
- American Eagle
- Mango
- Zara
In the high street segment, Gap tops the rankings. Gap’s affordable quality and renewed creative direction under Zac Posen have reignited affection for the brand. It leads in both Value and Love, with 80 percent of value-related conversation positive in sentiment and customers expressing excitement about on-trend collections and designer collaborations.
J.Crew is the second best-performing high street brand overall and ranks first for Love. Customers provide positive feedback on the brand’s fit, comfortable styles and inclusive sizing. Many reference the brand’s “comeback,” referring to the brand’s latest design direction following its turnaround efforts. J.Crew ranks first for meaningful interactions and second for earned media sentiment, two components of Love.
The BoF Insights Brand Pulse Index measures the digital signals and emotional responses that now shape brand equity, it helps fashion brand leaders see where they stand, and where to focus next.
Explore the full Brand Pulse Index and request a demo here.
