Good Oshi Day (November 4): A Campaign Design Guide for Brands

November 4 is a Japanese pun: 11 (ii, “good”) and 04 (oshi). On social media it goes by “Ii Oshi no Hi” (Good Oshi Day), and it has become a prompt for putting feelings about your oshi into words and photos. For companies and organizations, it can be more than a chance to sell products. It can be a way to show respect for what fans hold dear.

But a hashtag and a few prizes tend to produce a campaign any company could run. And when brand promotion pushes too far forward, fans can take it as “they used my feelings for my oshi.”

Rather than lining up unverified case studies of particular companies, this article sets out how to design a Good Oshi Day campaign that doesn’t borrow fans’ love as a prop.

What It Means for a Company to Join Good Oshi Day

The strength of an anniversary campaign is that it hands even people with no usual reason to speak up a cue: “today, it’s okay to talk about it.”

• Put your gratitude to your oshi into words
• Share memories with other fans
• Meet works and activities you didn’t know
• Introduce your favorite things to people close to you

At the center here is not the company but the people who support and the people they support. The company’s job isn’t to be the star but to set a stage where feelings are easy to express. That overlaps with the thinking behind oshi-katsu marketing, which nurtures long relationships rather than chasing short-term reactions.

Three Things to Decide First

1. Whose “Oshi” Are You Receiving?

“Tell us about your oshi” is easy to join, but if the scope is too wide the posts scatter. Narrow the entry point a little to fit the campaign’s goal.

Unless this is an official collaboration with a specific IP, you can’t freely use logos or images. Design the campaign so that “talking about your oshi” stays separate from “using rights-protected material in advertising.”

Good Oshi DayNarrow the door a little

• A personWords my oshi gave me
• A workThe scene I keep rewatching
• A teamThe live event I'll never forget
• An object or placeThe oshi in my daily life

Each door suits a different goal, from gratitude to wide reach.

2. What Stays With Participants Afterward?

If raising the number of posts is your only goal, the campaign ends that day. Thinking about what remains with participants raises the quality of the experience.

• They put their feelings into words
• They met people who share the same oshi
• They learned about a possible new oshi
• They could look back at their posts in an album or on a special page
• They were able to send thanks to their oshi or the management

This “value after participating” is the first sentence to write in a campaign proposal.

3. What Does the Brand Offer?

If you only ask fans to post, it looks as if the company is collecting their passion. The brand should offer something too: a place, editing, production, a donation, an exhibit, an archive.

You could feature posts by oshi color, project the messages you receive onto a venue for one day only, or hand out templates participants can use. A company can give value beyond a product discount.

Five Elements of a Campaign People Want to Join

1. A Theme You Understand in One Sentence

Keep the theme short enough that people know how to take part without reading the post text.

• “One thing you want to tell your oshi right now”
• “The oshi who cheered you up”
• “A landscape with your oshi color”
• “The live event that stayed with you most this year”

Narrow it to a single question and participants don’t hesitate. It also helps to work in words from culture fans already use, such as oshi color and sansen, with care.

2. A Way to Join in 30 Seconds

The more conditions for posting, the more people there are who have the feelings but can’t take part. Keep the required conditions as few as possible.

1. Check the official account
2. Answer the theme
3. Add the designated hashtag

If following, mentioning several accounts, buying a product and signing up as a member are all required, it starts to look more like an application chore than something to join. Keep only the conditions your goal needs.

1. 01Check the accountThe official account
2. 02Answer the themeOne question, one post
3. 03Add the hashtagThe designated tag

Every extra requirement filters out someone who had the feelings but not the time.

If you add prizes, check the Consumer Affairs Agency’s rules on premiums (in Japanese) before you publish. The treatment changes depending on whether a purchase is a condition, what the prizes are worth and how winners are chosen, so have your in-house legal and ad-review staff check the display conditions too.

3. A First Post That Serves as a Model

An announcement image alone doesn’t show how much passion to write with. If the organizers post several models first, such as “a short line,” “a long memory” and “a single photo,” people can see the range of ways to take part.

If you showcase only long posts, some people hesitate to post short ones. State clearly that “even one line is welcome,” and don’t set up a ranking among ways of expressing passion.

4. A Way for Posts to Be Found

Choose a hashtag that lets people imagine the content, not just the project’s name. To avoid spelling variation, it also helps not to mix kanji, hiragana and Latin letters too much.

When you feature posts, avoid a setup where only the chosen few look like the “right answer.” Set out the featuring policy in advance, such as daily rotation, by theme or random, and don’t judge by the scale of a post or the follower count.

5. Prepare for After It Ends

Even a closing post saying “thank you to everyone who took part” wraps up a campaign well. Go further and look back at the trends in the words collected and the memorable themes, in a form that doesn’t identify individuals, and participants will feel their post became part of the campaign.

A Four-Week Announcement Schedule

You can announce a campaign on the day alone, but for corporate campaigns rights checks and internal approvals take time. Allow at least several weeks of preparation so the conditions don’t change right before launch.

1. 4 weeks beforeDecide the basicsGoal, target, theme, rights, owners
2. 3 weeks beforePrepare materialsImage, sample posts, rules
3. 2 weeks beforeCheck and testApproval, posting path, inquiries
4. 1 week beforeStart teasersExplain how to join on one screen
5. November 4Run the dayPosts, responses, moderation
6. The next day onClose and reviewThanks, feature posts, numbers

Rights checks and approvals take longer than most teams expect.

Designs to Avoid

Making People Compete on “the Size of Their Love” by How Much They Spend

If you evaluate only the number of purchases or posts, differences in the money and time people have start to look like differences in love. Even if you borrow the mechanics of kakin and offerings (oshi-katsu slang for paying in), design the campaign so it doesn’t push participants into excessive competition.

Making the Product Bigger Than the Oshi or the Work

Gratitude to the oshi is the way in, but if the posting screen is filled with nothing but product pitches, it clashes with what fans feel. Treat the product as a tool for expressing feelings, and don’t take the starring role away.

Handling Secondary Use of Posts Only in Fine Print

Fan posts can involve several rights at once: the person’s own photos, third parties, venues, goods and images of the work. Check sources such as the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ copyright information (in Japanese) and explain the medium, period and any editing in plain language. Where the scope is broad, such as reuse in advertising, get individual consent.

Recruiting on a Scale You Can’t Respond To

It’s fine if you can’t reply to every post. But you do need a contact point for inquiries and reports of rights infringement. Set the campaign’s scale by the upper limit you can operate, not only by a post-count target.

Measure Success in Both “Numbers” and “Relationships”

In the campaign review, look at the participation experience as well as the number of posts and impressions.

• How many first-time participants were there?
• Was there a skew among ways of taking part, such as one line, long text or photos?
• Did positive conversations and fan-to-fan interactions arise?
• Where did inquiries and mid-participation drop-offs occur?
• Did contact with the brand continue naturally after the campaign?

Even when sales are the aim, don’t decide success on a single day’s direct sales alone. By also looking at whether comfortable touchpoints for fans increased, you can carry the learning into your next oshi-katsu marketing.

Notes From The Oshi Lab: A Day That Shows How You Usually See Fans

Good Oshi Day is not a test of a company’s entry into fan culture. It is a day that shows how a company sees fans the rest of the year. More than flashy prizes, understanding of the culture shows in details such as how gentle the conditions for taking part are, care for rights, and how the company responds to posts.

At the lab, we judge a good campaign not only by “how much the company got talked about” but by whether participants came to like their own oshi even more. Even if the company’s name doesn’t stay in front, if it has enriched the time people spend supporting, that experience comes back as long-term trust.

Summary

A Good Oshi Day campaign is not a one-day project of just preparing a hashtag and prizes.

1. Decide whose feelings, and which feelings, you will support
2. Design the value that remains after participating
3. Have the company offer something too, such as a place, editing or production
4. Check rights and privacy before recruiting
5. Review participants’ experience, not just the number of posts

Give the starring role back to fans and their oshi. That is the starting point for turning November 4 from a passing promotion into a day when a brand and its fans get to know each other.