BTS to TV collabs: What’s working for Free People on social

When it comes to trying new things online, Free People isn’t holding back.

The Urbn clothing brand, which has more than 4.6 million followers on Instagram and a growing investment in platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Substack, views social as key to its efforts to reach its core demographic of women ages 25 to 34.

“Instagram is really important to us in terms of driving sales,” Libby Strachan, director of brand marketing at Free People, told us. “TikTok is more exploratory and not really like the major sales driver yet, but we’re investing so much more in ads.”

Beyond that, Free People has started experimenting with new types of social content, like behind-the-scenes campaign videos and musician collabs. We spoke with Strachan about the risks that paid off in 2024 and the social media trends Free People might lean into —and sit out—heading into next year.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What worked well for Free People on social this year?

We started a social series called Free People Sessions where every episode features a different musician. We launched it over the summer with The Japanese House. The second episode was with Kacy Hill, and the third episode is with Towa Bird. We found that when we launched that series, we saw the highest performance when we did a collab post with the musician. In the past, we never really did collab posts, but we’ve just found that they perform really well, and they reach the artists’ audiences as well, so that was fun to test out. I feel like, with the way Meta is, all brands have been in the same boat where there’s times with the algorithm when we have to throw things against the wall and see what sticks. I think we’ve done a really great job this year of perfecting the mix of posting UGC, in-house studio imagery, and new product shots and figuring out what our followers are most into…A big learning for us was whenever we have a larger marketing campaign shoot, we always have someone from the social team there to capture behind-the-scenes content through a social lens versus taking static and video assets after the fact and resizing it for social later. It’s been best for TikTok and Instagram when we’re actually on set and shooting it on an iPhone.

Scrolling through Free People’s TikTok and Instagram accounts, it does seem like behind-the-scenes (BTS) content was a key focus for you this year.

Yeah, and it performs so much better than when we’re just posting campaign imagery or something shot professionally.

Why do you think people like the BTS content more than the campaign images themselves?

I think they’re just used to seeing that all the time from brands now, the regular campaign stuff, and they want something different. We’ve seen other brands in the space using huge talent, like Troye Sivan and Gap or Demi Moore and J. Crew, where you get that interview angle as well and some insight into the person. At the end of the day, we’re all selling clothes, right? So it’s like, what’s the interesting spin we can put on things in a campaign? It’s a little bit more exciting to get the BTS angle.

We found this with live shopping as well. We might have a celebrity or influencer host a live-shopping episode, but most of the time, we have someone from our office host, whether they’re from the styling team or the merchandising team. We find that they perform the same or even better in terms of engagement because our customers are hungry to see what it looks like at our office and see what we do behind the scenes.

Are there any specific creator partnerships or strategies that performed well for Free People this year?

We’re finding that a lot of creators are utilizing ShopMy and using affiliate links. Our team has loved the platform because we’re able to go in there and receive inbound requests from creators who are like, “Hey, I want to work with you. I want to feature your product.” That’s kind of an easy jumping-off point where we can start gifting them. We also have been running paid campaigns through ShopMy that have been really successful and seen really strong ROI. It’s been great to diversify beyond just working with LTK.

Success with influencer marketing is about investing for all different purposes. We have the people we work with as content creators whose content performs well on our owned channels…And then there’s people we want to work with because we love their take on Free People products and how they style them, and they do super well with their own audiences…And then we have the people we work with through ShopMy and LTK, where it’s affiliate [marketing], who drive massive amounts of revenue for Free People. It’s having the right mix of all of those things so you’re checking all the boxes. You can’t really rely on just one of those categories for success. You have to have the right balance of all of them.

Beyond Substack, are there other areas where Free People experimented in its online marketing this year?

We’ve been dabbling in YouTube a little bit. We’ve done some YouTube creator campaigns. We just did a sponsored vlog with Olivia Jade, so I’m curious to see what the results of that look like. We haven’t dabbled in YouTube over the last few years, and our social team has been trying to utilize YouTube Shorts a lot more recently with some of our video content that we created for TikTok and Instagram.

Is YouTube going to continue to be a focus in 2025?

I think it will be something we continue investing in in 2025. We definitely want to diversify our social media mix, and we never want to put all of our money into one place, especially if something happens with TikTok and we can no longer use it. I think it’s good to always have a strong mix across multiple platforms.

Are there any marketing priorities that are top of mind for you next year?

Right now, a lot of our competitors and a lot of brands in the space are investing in impactful brand and product collaborations. I think that’s a really great way to boost brand awareness and show a different side of your brand, so we’re always on the lookout for what our next partnership or collab could be.

I also think experiential will be really big for 2025. Free People hasn’t done a lot in the past, especially consumer-facing. We’ve done some influencer trips, which I feel have become overdone and saturated a bit in the market…This year, we’re definitely rethinking how we want to approach IRL activations. We’re not planning to do an escape again, just because it just feels a little boring at the moment. A lot of brands have done it, and if we’re going to do it, we want it to feel different, we want it to be really special.

Will Free People’s partnership strategy continue to focus on entertainment next year? Has that been a winning strategy for Free People?

It’s been a winning strategy, but it’s also tricky because the right thing has to come along. I feel like with [Free People’s Daisy Jones & The Six partnership with Prime Video in 2023], that was amazing because it spoke really well to that bohemian, ’70s trend that Free People does. And then with [Free People’s limited-edition Yellowstone collection], it spoke to the Western trend, which has been blowing up this year but also is something that Free People does well, especially with our We the Free sub-brand…Entertainment has been cool because it’s able to reach a new audience in an even bigger way, but I do think Free People has potential to do a collab with a fashion brand as well.

Any dream collaborators you’re thinking of?

If we’re thinking about fashion brands, I would love to do something with The Elder Statesman or Bode. I think that could be really cool with Free People’s brand aesthetic.