[OOi x Match Group] How We Turned Gen Z Emotions Into Collectible Companions

Yuzu teamed up with Odd One In to create Feel Real, a limited-edition collectible campaign featuring 2,000 co-branded figurine bag charms and an interactive in-app personality quiz. The campaign turned Gen Z emotions into playful characters, driving over 8 million impressions and sparking conversation around identity, belonging, and what it means to feel real.

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When Yuzu approached us for a back-to-school campaign, we knew we did not want to create just another branded giveaway.

Yuzu is a social app built for the Asian community, and the timing of the campaign was important: back-to-school, a season filled with new cities, new campuses, new friendships, and all the emotions that come with becoming yourself.

There is excitement, but also anxiety. There is the desire to belong, but also the fear of not knowing where to begin. There is the pressure to seem okay, even when everything feels uncertain.

That became the starting point for Feel Real.

Our idea was simple: what if every feeling had a little companion?

The Idea

Feel Real was built around one message:

It is okay to feel it all.

We wanted to create a collection that made emotions feel softer, more playful, and easier to share. Instead of designing charms that were just cute, we wanted each character to hold a feeling people already knew but might not always know how to say out loud.

The collection lived at the intersection of personality quizzes, collectible culture, and emotional storytelling. Users could take a co-branded quiz inside the Yuzu app, discover their emotional character, and enter a raffle to win one of 2,000 limited-edition Yuzu x OOi bag charms.

Each charm became more than an accessory. It became a small emotional signal: something you could carry, style, post, and use to say, “this is how I feel.”

What We Did

Our role was to turn Yuzu’s message of connection into a collectible world.

We developed the campaign concept, character system, emotional storytelling, and product direction for the charm collection. We thought about how each figure could work not only as a cute object, but as a social tool — something that could start conversations, make people feel seen, and bring the Yuzu community closer together.

The campaign included an in-app personality quiz, limited-edition collectible charms, creator storytelling, social content, and an IRL activation concept called the Feel Real Gallery.

Together, these pieces created a full emotional ecosystem around the product.

The Characters

Each Feel Real figure was designed as an emotional companion.

One character represents the person who feels everything at once — excited, overwhelmed, tender, dramatic, hopeful, and exhausted all in the same day. They remind us that feeling deeply does not make you too much. It makes you real.

Another character represents the person looking for belonging. They might be new to a school, a city, or a friend group. They want connection, but they are still learning how to reach for it. This character captures the quiet courage of putting yourself out there.

Another figure is for the one who says “I’m fine” a little too quickly. They use humor, cuteness, and chaos to cover something more vulnerable underneath. This character gives people a softer way to express what they might not be ready to say directly.

The final character represents the one ready to be seen. They are playful, bold, and still figuring things out, but they are beginning to take up space. They remind us that confidence does not always come from certainty. Sometimes it starts with curiosity.

Together, the characters turned a broad emotional campaign into something personal and collectible.

The Outcome

Feel Real helped Yuzu turn a back-to-school campaign into a deeper conversation around emotion, identity, and connection.

The quiz gave users a playful way to reflect and share. The charms gave them something tangible to carry. The characters gave the campaign emotional depth. And the Yuzu app gave the whole experience a community home.

For us, the project showed what branded collectibles can do when they are built with meaning from the start.

They can be more than merch.

They can become emotional shorthand. They can make people feel seen. They can turn private feelings into something shared.

That is what we wanted Feel Real to do: make every feeling feel a little less lonely.