BeReal in a Preening Society
In a day and age where preening celebrities and influencers post heavily choreographed and edited photos, BeReal with its “less is more” ethos has become the hottest new app amongst generation Z. Founded in January 2020 by the French developer Alexis Barreyat, BeReal is a photo sharing app for iOS and Android. The app sends out a push notification — ⚠️ Time to BeReal. ⚠️ — every day at a random time and users have just two minutes to take their photos; the camera snaps a selfie and a rear-facing photo simultaneously. BeReal has vastly become the number one downloaded app on Apple with a total of 21.6 million active worldwide users.
If you post after the two minutes expire, your photos are marked as “late” and you can’t view your friends’ posts unless you post first next time. Why is BeReal resonating? According to the company “BeReal is a candid and fun place for people to share their lives with friends,” “We want to make people feel good about themselves and their lives. We want an alternative to addictive social networks fueling social comparison and portraying life with the goal of amassing influence.” Their trademark being: “No filters. No likes. No followers. No bulls**t. No ads. Just your friends, for real.” “BeReal won’t make you famous. If you want to become an influencer you can stay on TikTok and Instagram.”
The app is both intimate and mundane, offering snapshots of other people’s days in real time, and as boring as that might sound there is something intriguing about seeing what your friends are up to at a specific given time in the day in an unedited format. Scrolling through my BeReal feed I see friends working at their desks, college students in class, someone eating a sandwich, a friend doing laundry and another reading a book on the couch. There are no filters, no staging, in fact it is the ugliness that is the heart of the app’s appeal. The key ingredient is that you are okay looking shitty in front of a group of people. It is real life taking place grabbed in a quick snapshot and shared with a group of friends.
How can brands get involved and ride the wave? Having brands and adverts on the platform goes against BeReal’s code of conduct, and currently there are no paid advertising options. However, being real and candid is key, and with a bit of creativity one might just have the perfect ad. Chipotle did just that! The company was the first brand to create an account and post a discount code giving the first 100 people who used it a free meal. Chipotle’s vice-president for digital marketing said: “We see a massive opportunity to highlight our brand’s transparency in fun ways for our fans on BeReal.” Chipotle has managed to be successful on BeReal because its content feels native and real to the platform.
Time will tell if the novelty of BeReal’s two-minute timer will fade. However, indicative of BeReal’s real threat to Instagram and Snapchat is in the recently added dual camera feature on Snapchat allowing users to capture photo and video using the front- and back-facing cameras on their phones at the same time. And you will know that if you receive a notice from Snapchat in six months saying “It’s SnapTime” that BeReal is here to stay…..well, for real.