Fitness apparel brand Gymshark similarly established a RealBrands account to “be where [its] community is,” its head of social, Emily Lorimer, wrote in an email. “We were on TikTok while it was still music.ly [and] we launched Threads the day it landed. It’s in our DNA to bring the brand to life on social, so we’re really excited to see how BeReal evolves.”
In its blog post announcing the launch of RealBrands accounts, BeReal offers a list of recommendations for the types of content brands should post on their official accounts, such as “a member of the marketing team sharing a photo of the set-up for a big event,” “someone from a product team holding a prototype for the first time,” or “HR sharing a picture from the company offsite where the team is volunteering together for the day.”
BeReal’s Moravits underscored the ability for up to 10 people to be logged into a brand’s account at the same time, which, for large global brands like Adidas, enables the brand’s followers to “experience different aspects [of the brand] and behind-the-scenes moments” from multiple locations and multiple teams around the world.
Poekert, who oversaw American Eagle’s BeReal account in his previous role, is less optimistic about the app’s potential as a space for brands. A brand requiring its social team—or other managers of its BeReal account—to constantly be on standby for the app’s unpredictable daily notification is “a really asking a lot from them,” he said, and he attributes some of brands’ past hesitancy to join the app to that core functionality—something that won’t change with the introduction of RealBrands accounts.
Though Poekert does see the benefit of brands leveraging BeReal to offer Gen Z consumers a behind-the-scenes peek at the brand and the social team behind it, he isn’t sure BeReal is the best platform for that type of content, he said.
“I think it makes sense for celebrities to be on [BeReal], because if a celebrity is sitting there eating cereal, that’s still interesting to their followers,” he said. “But if a brand social media manager is walking on a treadmill at 8:30 a.m. when the notification goes off, is that interesting to them? Probably not.”