IRNBY | A Visual Study of the Brand’s Communication Strategy

IRNBY is an entire lifestyle ecosystem including IRNBY — women’s clothing (sport and casual), IRNBY Training Club — a workout app, IRNBY Running Club — a running club, art.irnby — an art line (ceramics, sculpture, tableware), Predubejdai — cosmetics and fragrance. This ecosystem creates a self-contained brand world that the audience inhabits rather than simply shops in

Positioning and Brand Codes

IRNBY positions itself as sport-chic / active-lifestyle fashion: clothing for training, the city, and everyday life. Fit, body-shaping lines, fabric quality, and a sense of confidence in one’s body are central. The brand’s visual language combines sport, minimalism, physicality, and provocative femininity. Its aesthetic draws on the aerobics of the 1990s and 2000s and is deliberately eroticised

Tagline «INSPIRED WITH SPORT SPIRIT», сhannel motto «YOU BUT BETTER» and logo - the letter «I» shaped like a dumbbell. Mironova describes the brand’s logic plainly in an interview with Sobaka.ru: «Sex really does sell — it is one of our basic instincts… But openness can hold poetry rather than vulgarity. What I sell is not the body but emotion»

Target Audience

The audience is mainly young, affluent women (roughly 18–35), concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Their interests include fashion, fitness, body aesthetics, self-care, and the visual culture of social media. For this audience, clothing is not only a functional item but also a way to display discipline, attractiveness, status, and membership in a lifestyle community. A defining feature is that the core audience consists of Mironova’s own followers, for whom she is a role model — a parasocial bond

Product and Pricing

There are two lines sportswear (tops, shorts, rashguards, leggings, cycling shorts, tennis dresses) and casual wear (jeans, suits, dresses, hoodies, outerwear, accessories). The price segment is mid-to-high for the Russian market

• ribbed tank top — 2,990 ₽ • sport shorts — 4,390 ₽ • hoodie dress — 8,490 ₽ • eco-leather jacket — 16,990 ₽

IRNBY runs a multi-channel strategy in which each channel serves a distinct purpose

Instagram*

Instagram* is the brand’s main visual storefront. Campaigns, model photography, short videos, and the aesthetics of the body, sport, and confidence all do their work here

@irnby.store — around 433,000 followers @mironovanastasiia — around 2 million (the personal channel that drives trust and sales) @irnby.club — around 211,000 (workouts)

Through Instagram*, the brand sells a desired image of the self

Telegram

Telegram is a more direct line to the audience, where there are news, announcements, links to the site, and information about IRNBY Club workouts. It sustains the feeling of a closed community of insiders

@irnby_store — around 21,600 followers @irnby_club (Training Club) — around 21,500 followers, average reach of roughly 4,000 per post, ER ≈ 12,4% (high engagement)

TikTok

TikTok works as a stage for building a mood around the brand. The clothing appears through trend-driven formats such as lip-syncs, popular sounds, fast cuts, stylish shots, and short fashion videos

The @irnby.store account is confirmed. Through these trend formats, IRNBY’s pieces read as part of the current visual language of social media — bold, confident, on-trend

Choice of Theories

Two theories from the course were chosen because they best explain IRNBY’s strategy:

1. Visual Rhetoric (rhetoric and persuasion) — how the brand persuades through the image
2. Grunig and Hunt’s Four Models of PR + Dialogic Theory (public relations) — how the brand builds, and fails to build, relationships with its publics, especially in a crisis Together they cover both everyday communication and behaviour during scandals

Visual rhetoric studies how we are persuaded by what we see: composition, colour, and the layering of images. As media grow more interactive, the visual dimension matters more and more. Aristotle identified three instruments of persuasion that apply to the visual as well, there are "ethos", trust in the source (Mironova’s persona), "pathos" like emotion (desire, status, physicality) and "logos" — logic and argument (quality, fit, results)

All of IRNBY’s communication is persuasion through the image rather than through text

Grunig and Hunt (1984) identified four models of public relations:

1. Press agentry — provocation and one-way communication, with attention at any cost («there is no such thing as bad publicity»)
2. Public information, one-way but truthful
3. Two-way asymmetrical, the brand studies its audience but uses communication to persuade; the audience changes, not the organisation.
4. Two-way symmetrical — dialogue and mutual understanding, where the organisation changes along with its publics (the most ethical model)

Dialogic theory describes how to build quality relationships with publics ethically, through dialogue. It sets out five features of genuine dialogue: • Mutuality — the parties stand as equals • Propinquity — communicating before decisions are made • Empathy — an atmosphere of support and trust • Risk — vulnerability and a willingness to respond openly • Commitment — sincerity and a genuine effort to understand This theory sets the benchmark against which we measure IRNBY’s actual behaviour

We apply the theories to four slices of IRNBY’s communication:

1. The everyday visual language (Visual Rhetoric)
2. The «cup scandal» case (Rhetoric + PR)
3. The «Nike plagiarism» case (Rhetoric + PR)
4. The brand’s two-way communication (Dialogic Theory)

Visual Language: Ethos

The brand’s ethos is Mironova’s persona. The audience trusts not an abstract brand but a specific person — a self-made fitness entrepreneur. This can be seen in the comparison of social media - roughly 2 million followers on the personal account against 433,000 on the brand account, and a PR contact in the personal profile (ceo@irnby.com). Personal and corporate capital are fused, people's trust in Mironova transfers onto the clothing Here ethos outweighs logos — people buy a connection to Mironova rather than the technical properties of the fabric

Visual Language: Pathos

Pathos is IRNBY’s main lever. Body-shaping silhouettes, the aesthetics of the body, and provocative prints (the chest, the torso) appeal to desire, confidence, and status. The founder admits as much: «What I sell is not the body but emotion.» This is a direct description of how pathos works — the image triggers an emotional response that is then transferred to the product