I went on BeReal. Should a brand be on it?

BeReal, the two-year-old French photo-sharing app, has reached 10 million daily active users, and already 10 million downloads in August 22.

A booming adoption rate - even if stats are contradictory - led by a very differentiating user experience:

1. 2-minute time limit to post a dual camera photo (generally a selfie and what's in front of you) at random times,
2. No filter,
3. Instant reactions feature to 'react' to your friends or strangers' dual photos made of a candid selfie shot

Some Brands have been trying to tap into the phenomenon to reach a growing user-base to connect with - very - young audience, spread an authentic vibe, shape ties with relevant communities. In other words: going back to the social networking aspects, not just social media.

I've added a couple of brands to my BeReal. And this is what I've learnt.

01. Rough, raw, authentic

You cannot prepare your digital assets in advance on BeReal; it does not mean that you should not have a clear editorial calendar and social positioning. But it's a true challenge for social media managers: you need to be ready to shoot when you receive the notification if you truly want to play by the book. It's not that bad if you post a "late", but you lose a certain kind of momentum.

My experience is that the quality of the BeReal content is very versatile. I've seen a lot of posts with community managers or digital teams in their office. The first couple of times I thought it really cool to see the reality of their work. But despite their efforts, I thought it was still lacking at this stage a couple of magic recipes. BeReal is not just for the marketing teams: I would have loved to see the behind the scenes, the life in the factory, the makers and not just the marketers and communication teams. BeReal cannot be a replacement or an alternative for Instagram Stories: it has to be far closer to a "friends" logic, a bit like Facebook in its early days.

As for now BeReal is based on friending someone, the competition is utterly fierce to emerge vs real friends.

02. Brands are not welcome (yet), but...

It has been reported by Digiday that both e.l.f. Cosmetics and Chipotle cannot accept new friend requests as they've already reached limitations. Indeed, in the T&Cs, you are forbidden to use BeReal for advertising or commercial purposes to publish or facilitate the transmission of advertising, commercial solicitations, spam (...)"; the tactics led by Chipotle (offering discount codes to accelerate acquisition of new friends) are indeed somehow too aggressive.

As Facebook in its early days, it is tough to have a clear answer from BeReal. Silence can be a good option to leverage hype and also build a lever on brands though.

However, some brands seem to be more fit for BeReal; when they have a team we can relate to; when they dare and have the ability to showcase a diversity of contexts, so as there's a certain tension to discover the next random content, the next surprise.

We can already see some tactics which seem to work. Inn Beauty Project keeps posting content mostly dedicated to their most loyal fan-base. Information about availabilities of products, behind-the-scenes, random content made to make their "friends" smile. On their BeReal account, you feel like you're part of their internal Whatsapp group. There's a true effort to share photos that are optimized for dual camera post; they frequently share mirror selfies, a simple way to share both a branded element on the human behind the camera.

BeReal is also getting noticed by culture powerhouse, like NBC's Saturday Night Live; a sign that a real traction is happening, creating considerable network effects.

So what's next on BeReal for brands?

Brands, creators, marketers are still learning; the only certainty is that the app has found a sweet-spot that other social networks missed (or left behind). We already have some directions in mind:

1. BeReal is - truly - made for ephemeral content; this ephemerality creates very nice tensions to trigger interest: unlocking special offers for very short time, playing with uncertainties on when a brand is going to post to offer/reveal something powerful can be very nice to reinvent "drop" tactics. Especially if you're already a love brand
2. The discovery tab is an absolute mess. And it's a good thing: brands could definitely imagine bold tactics to surprise people randomly browsing. It happened already on platforms like Chatroulette. Remember Jessica Alba in 2011!
3. Content factory and content production is also forced to better structure the needs of the brand. Yes, you have to craft the right content that you can plan...but you also need to create the right process for...unplanned content. It's absolutely phenomenal creatively speaking, because if you figure out how to post in a brilliant ways on platforms like BeReal, imaging the strength to finally land original Stories-like creative work on all other social networks
4. BeReal is a bet: we're still at a very early stage. No one can truly know if it'll become a default app for large audience at this stage, if the social function BeReal works on is made to last. The KPIs are tough to determine as BeReal's agenda is clearly not to develop an advertising model for brands just yet, but to build a strong community. However, for some brands that are extremely conversational, in which their teams are naturally their first social media ambassadors, there's plenty of room to explore and invent