FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is the Tropos Index?
A daily 0–100 measure of how culturally exposed brands are received, across three dimensions (Cultural Capital, Velocity and Resilience), with each brand’s coverage mapped to the constituencies it reaches. We score 80 brands today, every day since 30 June 2026.
Where does the data come from?
Published coverage: news, trade and specialist press, YouTube and Hacker News, collected and processed every day. We don’t buy personal data or read private accounts. Our blind spots are real, and we’d rather you hear them from us: we don’t read images or video content itself, and we’re English-language only. We don't monitor TikTok, Reddit or podcasts directly. An occasional page from those platforms can enter the record when it surfaces in news search.
What’s a constituency?
A group defined by what it values and how it reads the world, not by age, income or location. We map 38of them. A brand’s coverage reaches some constituencies and not others, and they don’t all take it the same way. That difference is usually where the risk is.
Why only 80 brands?
Depth before breadth. We add brands in batches. A brand added today has a record starting today: the history can’t be filled in after the fact, and we won’t pretend otherwise.
Can a brand pay to change its score?
No. Your score never changes because you're a client, and no fee ever depends on it. Our scoring code can’t read who our clients are.
How accurate are your forecasts?
Too early to say, and we won’t pretend otherwise. The first forecasts become final on 29 October 2026. When they do, the results publish on the ledger: right and wrong, styled identically. We’d rather show you a record than a percentage.
How is a forecast graded?
Each forecast is a yes-or-no claim with a deadline. When the deadline passes, we record whether it happened. The grade becomes final 90 days after the forecast was made, which is when we check whether our probabilities are calibrated: whether our 70% calls come true about 70% of the time.
What does “sealed” mean?
Some forecasts are published as a fingerprint, probability and deadline, without the brand or the claim. We do this for one group of brands we use to measure our own accuracy, because they’ve never been in a position to react to our forecasts, and for forecasts about a client’s decision that hasn’t been announced yet. A sealed forecast can still be checked: you can confirm it hasn’t changed, even though you can’t read it.
How do I know you haven’t changed a forecast after the fact?
Press Check this forecast on any entry. Your browser fetches our daily fingerprint file from a public repository and confirms the forecast is unchanged. The check runs on your machine, not ours.
Is this social listening?
No. Social listening counts what’s being said. We measure who it’s reaching, how they’re taking it and how that’s moving, and we put our forecasts on the record so you can judge us on them.
Do you tell us what to do?
No. We show what the record says, the decisions it bears on and what would change the reading. The decision is always yours.
Why did scores change on 24 September 2026?
We removed four components we couldn’t yet measure, which had been held at a neutral placeholder for every brand, and retired one dimension that rested entirely on them. Every score before that date is kept exactly as published, and the change is recorded brand by brand. The ranking didn’t change. The ceiling did.
How much does it cost?
Engagements are scoped to your brand and category. We’re currently offering three Founding Pilots at no fee. → chris@troposindex.com
Who’s behind Tropos?
Chris Jackson, founder. → Field Notes