Beauty brands owned by L’Oréal Group and Procter & Gamble, as well as Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty, are making their way onto rising platform BeReal. And you’re far more likely to see a lo-fi photo of their employees’ apartments or laptop screens than a professional ad campaign.
Following influencers and early beauty adopters including E.l.f. Beauty and small indie lines, a flood of major brands with multi-million-dollar social media budgets at their disposal have made their way onto BeReal in the past few weeks. These include multiple brands owned by L’Oréal Group: Kiehl’s officially launched on the platform September 1, while CeraVe and Urban Decay have profiles listed on the app. P&G-owned Farmacy Beauty has also been posting regularly on BeReal, as has Sephora darling Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty. In the U.K., The Inkey List and Ciate’s Lottie London have gotten in on the BeReal hype, as well. For now, they are staying true to the app’s unfiltered and low-effort aesthetic.
“The premise of BeReal aligns with our brand ethos; we aim to break down the unrealistic standards of perfection, and we saw this platform as an opportunity to bring this to life while also meeting our community,” said Ashley Murphy, senior director for consumer marketing at Rare Beauty, which opened its BeReal account this summer.
The brand frequently receives an enthusiastic flood of comments and likes on its posts, which Murphy said is an extension of the brand’s TikTok content that centers around products with googly eyes glued to them.
“Publishing entertaining and engaging content is key for us,” said Murphy, while the brand also has a “two-way conversation” with its community on the app. “I was only 7 min late this time Im sorry,” the brand says in the comments on a photo that missed the app’s signature two-minute deadline. One reply jokes, “Its not ok be better.” Fans also send comments asking for a BeReal appearance by Gomez, who has not yet shown up on the account.
According to information recently posted by BeReal to its jobs board, it has 10 million daily active users as of August. Its recent Series B funding round of $30 million puts the company at a pre-money valuation of $600 million.
Like on TikTok, brands are leaning into humorous content. Anthropomorphic products are also a theme for Glow Recipe, which has featured posts of its products wearing a tiny cowboy hat and a small wig to promote its collab with hair-care brand Ouai. While follower counts aren’t visible, content director Yasmeen Gharnit said Glow Recipe has over 1,000 friends. Given the app’s limitations, followers have to be individually followed back and counted manually.
It’s a “more niche community,” said Gharnit. In addition to funny content, Glow Recipe is also engaging fans with exclusive checkout codes to receive free samples, such as a deluxe sample of its watermelon SPF. Coming up, it plans to do a giveaway with a code for a free full-size product for the first 10 followers to use it.
“We were thinking, ‘What can we do that’s fun, different, experimental and a little weird?'” said Gharnit.
Many other brands, meanwhile, use BeReal to showcase employees’ office and home-office life. Farmacy, for example, recently featured an employee on its marketing team sitting at home watching the VMAs in her apartment. Kiehl’s launched its account with a photo of its staff and its “Mr. Bones” skeleton mascot.
The Inkey List is focused on behind-the-scenes content for its BeReal account that launched on August 22, said Colette Laxton, the brand’s co-founder and CEO. This includes photos of office days, photo shoots, pets in the office and product launch teases. She describes it as “an exciting way for us to deliver content we wouldn’t otherwise have the space to create.”
Brands tap into both public and private communities on social media to build their BeReal audience. Kiehl’s, for example, promoted the launch of its BeReal account on Instagram. Glow Recipe promoted it on both its Instagram and TikTok accounts, as well as in its private Facebook brand ambassador group. Rare Beauty, meanwhile, promoted it on its social channels, as well as with its private group on Slack-like messaging app Geneva.
Gen Z-focused Lottie London, a fellow U.K.-based brand, launched its BeReal in early August after Nora Zukauskaite, the brand’s head of global marketing, noticed that “everyone in the office is completely obsessed” with posting on the app. Posts feature staff members in the office, as well as products. “We’re just starting at the beginning. It’s our trial and test period, at the moment,” Zukauskaite said.
Larger brands are moving onto the platform fast, knowing they compete with small indie startups that have the freedom to experiment with content minus bureaucratic red tape. Skin-care brand Wldkat, which launched its account earlier this month, is managed by its founder Amy Zuzunegui. Unlike the brand’s TikTok and Instagram accounts that are managed by a social team, on BeReal, Zuzunegui just posts photos on the brand account from her own phone.
“TikTok takes a tremendous amount of focus and time and energy. BeReal is the exact opposite,” she said. “It’s supposed to be super raw, the way Instagram was initially.” She posts photos of what she’s doing with the brand at the moment, such as packing boxes or wearing brand merch. “It’s very unrefined, which is kind of my thing,” she said.
