Béis Turns Its Employees Into Mini Social Media Stars

Béis, the six-year-old luggage company founded by actress and founder Shay Mitchell, is drumming up social media buzz from its employees.

While competing luggage brands like Away and Monos give creators the keys to growing their social media followings, Béis is seeing the most social engagement from posts created by its own staff.

For the past couple of years, Béis has turned its social media focus towards its employees to give followers a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into photo shoots. The approach is also aimed at turning the company’s employees into social media stars. The brand mixes these posts with more traditional influencer campaigns like the recent launch of its Utility Collection in August.

Béis has recently ramped up the amount of employee-focused content. Since September, Béis’ employee-focused TikTok content has received more than 19.9 million views and 1 million engagements compared to 347,000 views and 2,600 engagements from non-employee content during the same time period, according to the brand.

The strategy is aimed at getting other brands to weigh in. In June, the Béis marketing team noticed a trend on social media where people were asking their boyfriends for bags. This led Béis’ marketing team to make a video asking for 100,000 likes and an airline sponsor to go on a trip. The TikTok post went viral, with more than 200 brands commenting on it like Sol de Janeiro, Anthropologie, and Morphe Cosmetics. Béis’ marketing team took the trip to Costa Rica in August, with Delta and The Four Seasons agreeing to pay for the trip. Brands like Monday Swimwear and Rare Beauty also sent free products for Béis’ staffers.

ADWEEK spoke with Shay Mitchell about the brand’s approach to employee-driven social content.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

ADWEEK: When creating Béis’ social strategy, was there anything you knew you wanted?

Shay Mitchell: I’ve always been so heavy on social myself [that] I kind of did similar things—just listening to what your audience likes and engages with.