Setting Alarms and Posting Simultaneously at the Same Time– A Huge Hit on TikTok! How did “TigHug” Became Viral?

“TikTok Buzzword of the Year 2022” Grand Prize Winner! Music video has received over 10 million views!

We started with a strategy to increase the number of followers on our personal social networking sites, and we changed the posting time from 6pm to 9pm to get statistics on the response.

I also said that after the buzz is generated, it is important, and depending on how well you perform when people gather together, it will depend on whether they will leave like a portal or be scooped up. It’s not enough to just focus on live performances, or to do it for a few years, but it’s not good to be biased toward any one area.

On August 31, Tsubasa Records launched the boys’ division “Tsubasa Boys Production” (CUBERS, THE SUPER FRUIT, If the world were the world, Tsubasa Boys KIDS! and Tsubasa Otoko Kids).

You may have seen a video of seven boys in colorful sailor suits singing and dancing on Nico Nico Nico Douga to a catchy tune with an impressive intro “tch tch tch” and a memorable refrain of “ano ne, ano ne,” “but ne, but ne,” etc. This is the video of a CD debut on August 31, 2012.

This is the debut song “Chiguhagu” by “THE SUPER FRUIT” (a.k.a. “Spafull”), a “male version of purity group” that made its CD debut on August 31.

The music video has received over 10 million views, and the song has topped TikTok’s weekly ranking for six weeks in a row. In addition, a game in which ordinary people tweeted short stories of their own reels and then posted videos of themselves dancing to “tch tch tch” became a huge hit on TikTok, an unexpected situation.

In addition, there was also a “make it together with the fans” trick.

For example, “If you bring your friend who comes to the live for the first time to the release event, he/she can get a free CD and a bonus ticket.

“Just before the official launch of TikTok, we held a meeting with the members and told them that the first step was to aim for 1,000 posts, and each member held an insta-live and teach fans on how to search and post. 

“The buzz before the release was a miracle, and there was a week of hard work, and then gradually famous influencers started posting, and then someone created a format where the song would play after a short talk about failures or funny episodes, and it spread rapidly on TikTok.”

Up to that point, the event had attracted only about 100 people, but the target for the release event was set at 300 people. In reality, however, 1,300 people showed up.

A hit born from the idea of a single chief manager, the concept, and the steady efforts of individual members.

The most interesting point is that the hit was not the result of large-scale marketing or promotion by a major agency that invested a huge sum of money, but rather the result of the idea and vision of a single chief manager and the steady efforts of each individual member.

When I originally created the boy group Cubers at Tsubasa Records, I often felt that there was a wall in the world where only one group could make a major debut and compete. Unlike female idols, male idol groups have always had a group competition style.

For the fans who have supported us since the beginning, there is a sense of “excitement” in having two groups make their debut at the same time, so we decided to create “THE SUPER FRUIT” (hereafter “SPAFURU”) and “If the world is the world!” (hereafter referred to as “the world is the world”), and we created a new men’s division with a large group.

Mr. Horikiri explains how the program got started.

While the mainstream of male idol groups today is dominated by music, dance, and visuals that lean more toward K-pop…

While the mainstream of male idol groups today is dominated by music, dance, and visuals that lean toward K-pop, the catchy tunes and eye-catching colorful costumes of Spafuru’s idol image are quite different.

I’m aware that the trend has been toward K-POP for the past three or four years, but I really liked the Japanese songs of the 90s and 2000s, and I’ve been listening to them since I was a child.

The first CD I ever bought was by KinKi Kids, and I listened to a lot of SMAP, V6, Tokio, and Arashi, though I never got to go to their live concerts. So I had a strong desire to do a Japanese idol group, or a domestic idol group, in a more honest way.

That is what I have always wanted to do with Cubers’ music. I think it is better to do what is easiest to understand in Japan than to do culture from outside with Japanese people. Japanese people are suited to Japanese songs, not English songs.

So I thought it would be interesting to have a good song with a strange title, so I decided to use “Chiguhagu” as THE SUPER FRUIT’s debut song.

The group name “THE SUPER FRUIT” is derived from the wish to be a special existence that is not essential like a main dish or water, but “nice to have” like a fruit, and to “deliver freshness forever”.

The seven members, Tadaima Oda, Teruhisa Takura, Harumi Hoshino, Yuri Horiuchi, Yuki Matsumoto, Shion Suzuki, and Hayahiro Abe, were born between 2003 and 2007.

My theory is that it takes five years for a group to “sell” itself properly, not in terms of buzz, but in terms of popularity and ability.

I created the group with a focus on 17- to 18-year-old members, with an eye toward the next five years, so that they would not be unable to perform due to school commitments at the time when we wanted to sell the group the most.

Another feature of the group is that many of the members have a neutral atmosphere.

For example, three or four of us would walk side by side from the dressing room to the concert hall, arm in arm. 

I saw it from behind and thought it was wonderful that the seven of us could allow such an atmosphere and do it so naturally. This image of them led to the sailor costumes and the catch phrase “a male version of a purist group,” and the song “Chig Hug” was born from that.

When I first encountered “Chig Hag,” I was hooked by the addictive and catchy rhythm and thought it was a joke song, but upon listening, I realized that it was a sincere song with lyrics such as “Different from everyone else, that’s a lovely thing,” “Chiguhagu chiguhagu hug, then we can understand each other,” “Like men, like women, we don’t need such prejudice,” and “Like men, like women, we don’t need such prejudice,” etc. The lyrics, such as “Different from everyone else, that’s what’s lovely.”

It’s like a natural “I knew it, Halo Pro is amazing” kind of thing came out of me.

The lyrics were written by Yuri Satoda, who is a latecomer to the male idol scene, and he says he aimed for music that doesn’t compromise even the last note of a single bar. As a latecomer to the male idol scene, he felt that something had to stick out, so he focused on the quality of the music. After further analysis of the female idol scene, he found that the “Hello! Project (a.k.a. “Halo Pro”).”

 “What Halo Pro” is doing has never wavered, and there was a time when the female idol scene was like a warring age, but as others were being eliminated from the scene, there was a feeling of ‘Halo Pro is good after all,’ and now they are returning, or rather, they have secured their position. I don’t think Upfront had any intention to do this, but it’s as if a natural “Halo Pro” is great after all feeling has emerged.

I think the reason for this is the commitment to Halo Pro’s music. The fact that fans can say, “I’m a halo-otaku,” is a status that shows how much of a deviation from an otaku they are.

We are an agency with no backing, so I hope that by being persistent in our efforts, Tsubasa Boys Productions (Tsubasa Otoko) will eventually become a leader in the male idol world.

In the case of Haropro, there are many other male idol groups such as Morning Musume, Angellum, Juice, and Ameko Kodama. In the case of Halo Pro, there are lyricists such as Ameko Kodama, who has provided lyrics for several groups including Morning Musume, Angels and Juice₌Juice, and choreographers are also decided to some extent, so the color of the office is said to be present.

Instead of holding a large competition, we talked to about 10 trusted writers from the very beginning of the establishment of Tsubasa Boys Production and asked them if they would write the songs for us.

“One of the writers at the trusted writers’ office said, ‘We have a good newcomer,’ and one of the people he mentioned was Yuri Satoda. Besides Chiguhagu, his songs are really good.”

The actual songwriting process started with communicating the concept of the song and the mood of the members.

The song was good from the first draft, which was just a reference and concept, and then we talked about the lyrics, which were about the “beauty of appreciating diversity” in today’s world. The melody is 5-6 back and forth.

“Hug!” was initially proposed as the title, but I can’t read it, and katakana would be more bizarre, but I thought it would have more impact, so I decided to use katakana. For the choreography, Mr. Horikiri asked CRE8BOY, in whom he has complete trust, to make it catchy, make you want to dance, and at the same time make it difficult.

In closing, Mr. Horikiri said, “For example, if I were to work for a major company, I would have to work with a group of people.”

For example, there is a difference between me creating a group for an arena tour with a major agency and an agency like ours creating a male idol division from scratch, cultivating it by myself, and working hard with the members and their fans to bring the group to an arena tour.

I think it would be a dream come true if a group from our company could tour an arena. That is what makes it worthwhile and what I want to accomplish.