Bebe Rexha duets with Bebe brand for body positive campaign

Dive Brief:

Grammy-nominated singer Bebe Rexha is collaborating with fashion brand Bebe on a "Bebe Loves Bebe" campaign that celebrates the "idea of loving and accepting yourself," according to a press release.
The Fall 2019 campaign includes Rexha's appearance in Bebe's Fall 2019 campaign on social media, out-of-home signage and print ads for Vogue's September issue.
The companies say the campaign was inspired by Rexha's dressing down of designers when she was nominated for a Grammy earlier this year. In a video posted on Instagram, the singer urged women and men to love their bodies at any size, and she criticized designers who will not dress celebrities if they don't have "a runway size."

Dive Insight:

Bebe brand manager Joey Gabbay said in a statement accompanying the announcement that, in addition to sharing a name, Rexha and Bebe both share "passionate fans." They also now both share a set of declared values, at least for this campaign, that helps to characterize each brand. These days, lifestyle brands like — Bebe and singers looking for some non-musical differentiators — help to distinguish themselves from competitors by coalescing around purpose-driven values like self-acceptance. Brands with a high sense of purpose grow two-times faster than other brands, according to Kantar research.

This new campaign could signal a new direction for the Bebe brand, which has undergone some painful transitions. Following a restructuring effort in 2017 and its exit from physical store leases, Bebe has refocused itself on direct-to-consumer sales. The brand's new site is data-driven and "well positioned to scale quickly and deliver exponential growth in the online channel," according to Jan Nugent, CEO of Branded Online, Bebe's e-commerce solutions provider, in a statement cited by Retail Dive.

The company has struggled to move past the exit of creative director Neda Mashouf, who divorced president and leading investor Manny Moushaf in 2007. Manny Moushaf was brought back in 2016 amid a corporate restructuring.

For her part, Rexha has been adding to her brand ambassadorships, such as her partnership with Lay's potato chips. The campaign, launched in February, saw Rexha write an original song, "Right Here, Right Now," which she remixed across different genres to correspond with three new chip flavors.