The communication strategy of Beefree

Befree has built a community of almost 1.5 million followers on social media through a small in-house team. The brand maintains a presence across multiple platforms, including VK, YouTube, Telegram and other platforms. At the same time, the key purpose of working in social networks is not direct sales. Priority is given to building a community, subscriber engagement in the life of the brand, and quick feedback. In terms of content, the brand combines professional lookbooks with casual, phone-filmed content which consistently shows higher audience engagement.

The brand’s PR strategy is based on several directions. An important part of the promotion is influencer marketing and co-creation: the brand is constantly working with bloggers, influencers and young artists. At the same time, Befree shoots ordinary people in advertising campaigns, rejecting the ideology of a single «brand face». Among the major collaborations are joint collections with the grocery delivery service Samokat and the Smeshariki cartoon brand. To work systematically with creators, the Befree Co: Create HUB was launched in 2022, where anyone can suggest an idea for a new collection. In addition, the brand actively uses UGC (user-generated) content — within the framework of the Befree Community section, photos of real customers wearing the brand’s clothes are reposted.

From the point of view of distribution, the brand adheres to an omnichannel approach. Befree has historically grown as a chain of physical stores, and it is the offline format that still forms the basis of its sales — the brand is actively expanding its retail footprint by opening large flagship outlets. Digital channels are developing in parallel: Befree is represented on the largest Russian marketplaces — Ozon and Wildberries, while the choice of platforms is a conscious decision on brand management.

Befree’s communication strategy, which focuses not on direct sales, but on building long-term relationships with the audience, is best explained through Relationship Management Theory, a concept that arose as a reinterpretation of the very essence of PR: from attempts to convince the audience to the desire to build relationships with it. In 1984, Ferguson was the first to identify this shift, arguing that understanding public relations requires not only knowledge of communication processes, but also an understanding of organizations themselves, their audiences, and the social environment in which they exist. Сenter and Jackson developed this idea in 1995, arguing that the desired outcome of PR practice is the establishment of positive relationships, rather than communication per se. Ledingham and Bruning defined the brand’s relationship with the audience as a state in which the actions of each side mutually affect the economic, social and cultural well-being of each other. Broom supplemented this definition by describing a relationship through a mutual exchange of resources that leads to mutual benefit for both sides.

The central question of the theory is: what types and management processes are most effective for identifying the common interests of an organization and its audiences in order to achieve mutual understanding and mutual benefit? The theory identifies six key indicators of relationship quality: control mutuality, trust, commitment, satisfaction, exchange relationship and communal relationship — it is through them that it is possible to assess how effectively an organization builds communication with its public.

Trust is manifested in the brand’s consistent rejection of an idealized image. In advertising campaigns, Befree features ordinary people, rejecting the concept of a single «brand face» and promoting the values of freedom of expression and uniqueness of everyone. Trust also manifested itself in a crisis situation: when a plus-size photo shoot in 2023 sparked controversy on social media, the brand carefully crafted its messaging and moderated the comments, removing only insults and hate — and it was its community that became the main defender of the brand, independently arguing its position in the comments.

Commitment is expressed in the brand’s long-term investments in relationships with the audience. The Befree Co: Create HUB was launched in 2022, where anyone can suggest an idea for a new collection — the best ones are chosen by the users and the brand’s jury. Collections created in collaboration with artists sell out one and a half times faster than others, which confirms that commitment to co-creation brings measurable results.

Community relationship was most clearly manifested in the campaign «It’s always fashionable to be free.» In July 2023, the brand launched a campaign and invited followers to share personal stories in the comments. The stories turned out to be so sincere that the brand decided to publish them as a manifesto book, since Befree is primarily a community. The participants’ comments were not edited, including emojis, and the participants chose the photos themselves — the book turned out to be more like a zine than a catalog.

Control mutuality is implemented by providing the audience with a real impact on the product. On the Co: Create HUB platform, users not only watch the process of creating collections, but also vote for the best ideas of the creators — thus the audience gets a direct impact on the brand’s product range. In addition, the brand strives to respond to all incoming messages within two hours, which creates a sense of equal dialogue.

Satisfaction is provided through unexpected but close collaborations. Major joint projects include collections with the Samokat delivery service and the Smeshariki animation brand. The manifesto book also includes stories about Befree’s key values of inclusivity, openness to new things, and collaborative creativity, and all proceeds from the book’s sales were donated to the «Anton is Here» foundation. In this way, the interaction with the brand goes beyond buying clothes and acquires a semantic dimension.

Exchange relationship is implemented through systematic work with influencers and UGC. In 2024, about 7.2 thousand influencers participated in the promotion of the brand on various platforms. At the same time, cooperation is not limited to paid collaborations — Befree builds an ecosystem in which influencers become full-fledged participants in the brand’s life: they can first appear in a paid collaboration, and subsequently release a full collection in collaboration with the brand.

An analysis of Befree’s communication strategy through the prism of Relationship Management Theory demonstrates that the brand consistently and consciously builds long-term relationships with the audience, and is not limited to one-off advertising campaigns. All six relationship quality indicators — trust, commitment, communual relationship, control mutuality, satisfaction, and exchange relationship — are reflected in specific brand practices: from the Co: Create HUB platform and manifesto books to work with influencers and UGC content. It is especially significant that the brand community, in a crisis situation with a plus-size photo shoot, independently defended the values of Befree — this indicates a high level of trust and genuine audience engagement, which is difficult to build solely through advertising tools.

At the same time, the analysis allows us to identify several areas for improving the strategy. Firstly, despite its wide presence on Russian social networks, the brand could further develop the format of long-term ambassadorial relations with influencers — not one-off integrations, but lasting partnerships that the audience perceives as genuine. Secondly, the Co: Create HUB platform has significant untapped potential: the brand could be more active in talking about what happens to creators after the release of the joint collection — how their audience has changed, what kind of response their work has received — this would strengthen the control mutuality indicator and attract new participants to the platform. Thirdly, the brand’s omnichannel presence — offline stores, marketplaces, and its own website — is still not fully integrated with the community strategy: the experience of interacting with the brand in physical stores could become an additional touchpoint for strengthening relationships with the audience, for example through offline events or pop-up formats.