#ochsfam

The story behind the hashtag

At ochs und junior, we’ve never once made a paid advertisement or done an event sponsorship – let alone hired someone to endorse our watches. We are a product-first mechanical tech company. We let Ludwig Oechslin’s radical innovations do the talking. And sometimes, our passionate customers!

On February 9th, two of these customers, Chris and Nils, created the Instagram fan page @Ochsfam,which is now steadily picking up steam. There are already 33 posts including challenges like #ochsin60seconds, which show our customizer creating new designs on a mobile phone in just 1 minute!

We asked Chris and Nils to tell us their thoughts behind their page and hashtag, and here is what they wrote:

Nils and I created the @Ochsfam page after a ‘Great Minds Think Alike’ direct message discussion on Instagram. We are both obviously big fans of the watches and brand and had common ideas about sharing and curating our passion through Instagram.

The initiative of the @Ochsfam was to have a specific platform in a small parallel to the worldwide Instagram phenomena of the ‘#Watchfam’. It’s a page and hashtag specifically for the growing ochs und junior Instagram community, the “Ochs Family”. Whether someone is a current/prospective Owner or a general Watch Enthusiast, it is a way to see and appreciate the various models in real world settings. It’s a forum to share design ideas, ask questions, give feedback, discuss the various models and foster interest and enthusiasm. We aim to be the Instagram page people find and/or are referred to when they want to experience ochs und junior watches and the people who own them.

The hashtag #ochsfam was quickly adopted by Ochs und Junior owners who are active Instagram users and the feedback so far has been fantastic. Nils and I interact with fellow enthusiasts in both direct messaging and through the comments of the posts and the page is growing slowly but surely. We’ve catalogued virtually all the Ochs und Junior pictures we can find on instagram and along with some curated video posts like ‘#ochsin60seconds’, Customizer designs and Ochsfam follower submitted content we aim to keep the feed fresh and interesting for the audience. We appreciate the interaction from your @ochsundjunior team and appreciate any feedback since you are after all the source of our enthusiasm!

And Nils’ reply:

Chris has really covered everything. My only addition would be how I came to reach out to who I then only knew as Farlius. While stuck in the usual Kampala morning traffic jam, I was distracting myself thinking about how ochs und junior (a perpetual on my wrist) should also have a fan page on Instagram and what such a page could be called. Ochsaholics? No, too many something-aholics out there already. Ochsfam? Hmmm… Like Oxfam, the NGO? Working in development, the play on words was obviously hilarious (but probably lost on most others). Yes, it would have to ochsfam!!! So I immediately checked whether anyone else was already using the name (or hashtag). And somebody was. Someone with a gorgeous moon phase was using the hashtag #ochsfam. So I DM’ed Chris to ask if he’d be interested in doing something together. It turns out he’d been thinking about doing exactly the same thing. And with that the #Ochsfam page was born!

We’re looking forward to what comes next! Thank you Nils and Chris!!!