2026, eTail Palm Springs Room G 26 Day 3_Fireside Chat_ How to Go Viral & Transform Buzz Into a Sustainable Brand-Building Engine

Announcer: Please welcome to the stage Melissa, Casey, and Taylor to discuss in a fireside chat how to go from virtual and transform buzz into a sustainable brand-building engine. Let's give it up

Melissa Daniels, Senior Reporter, Modern Retail: Excited for you ladies. I just wanna do a quick intro. What a fun topic. How to go viral and transform buzz into sustainable brand-building engine. I know we've all been there. Pause a moment. Viral moment happens. You're like, "How do we reverse engineer this? How does this happen? Can we replicate?" It's total chaos.

So we have the- these ladies here to tell us how to make buzz real, how to make it sustainable. Please welcome Taylor Casey, and Melissa.

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: Hi. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you everyone for continuing to hang out at eTail today. I feel like today's the day we really kinda get into the brass tacks.

Some of the flash goes away and we really get behind the scenes and get some of the real talk. So for the uninitiated, Casey, Taylor, what's the origin story of Cake's Body? It's not a pastry company, to be clear.

Speaker 79: Nothing like talking about boobs to liven things up on the last day. Yeah.

Keep things interesting. But we started Cake's Body four years ago with a very simple problem. We hated the pads in our sports bras. And for the men in the audience who might not be familiar, sports bras come with these foam pads that always get crumpled and are just impossible, and they end up falling out, and it's a whole disaster.

So we decided to create a product that was the first nipple cover specifically for workout tops and swimwear. And at the time, we put in $5,000 from our savings accounts. We had full-time jobs at the time. We had no investors, no social media following, and we put it out to the world We launched. And pretty quickly after we launched, we got an email from a woman named Megan, and the subject line was, "This product changed my life."

And Megan was a breast cancer survivor who had gone through seven breast cancer surgeries, and said for the first time she could wear things she couldn't wear before. So that was really our aha moment. This is a little bit bigger than just the pads in our sports bras, and it led us on our mission. We say we're on a mission to do what Spanx did for butts but for boobs, and redefine the whole undergarment industry.

And that was kinda how we started, but in the beginning, we had no marketing budget, and we weren't selling anything.

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: And just for scale to set context for the conversation is we grew our company with no investors to $100 million in three years, all rooted in virality as the starting point, and then being able to scale it from there.

So I just wanted to give that context 'cause when a lot of people hear we run a nipple cover business- Yeah. ... they might not know that or expect that.

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: I remember I had to explain to someone, they're like why is this a good business?" And I said, "You've never had this problem before, have you?" Because I can tell you why.

I wanna hear a little bit about when you were first in those moments of putting the brand on social, what you first noticed that, quote unquote, going viral meant for the brand. What showed up in your metrics? And how did you really say, "Hey, this is actually a growth engine"?

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: Yep. There was no denying it.

We spent about four months selling almost nothing, and it was... Casey was our fulfillment center, and I was- ... our head of social media and main content creator. And I made three TikToks a day for a month, and Casey was fulfilling a couple orders here and there. And all of the content was rooted in the pain points that women were feeling, and- One video, it was in May of 2022.

I pulled out the pads in my sports bra and said, "Name something designed by a man for a woman that sucks." And then I started talking about the cakes, or started talking about the pads, and then went into cakes, and it went completely viral. I think it was maybe a million views at the time. Cool. And we had sold out of our first full round of inventory in one night.

Casey had a full-time job, so we had to hire TaskRabbits to our house to be able to fulfill all the orders. And that was that first moment where we felt like, "Okay, people need this product. People are connecting with that pain point." And there was a real emotional connection to the problem, but also some tension with me blaming men for designing the pads- Sure

in our sports bras. That got people really fired up in the comments. Yeah. 'Cause if you've ever been on social media, people like to get fired up in the comments. And all of a sudden everyone was an expert on patents and who patented the first sports bra pads. And was like, "No, you are wrong. So and and that is a lot of brands, especially bigger brands, shy away from anything that creates tension or controversy, but that taught us everything we need to know, which is tension and controversy is necessary for going viral.

If you wanna create something vanilla that no one gives a shit about, that is very easy to do. Most brands do that, and because there's a lot of red tape around what would get approved or what's on brand. And so for us, having some level of tension that's not rooted in bashing someone else or bashing how a certain woman chooses to dress, but maybe rooted in a larger societal problem about- how women feel in their clothes or whatever. So-

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: Yeah ...

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: that was really... That was three, four years ago, but now it's still the core of everything we do.

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: Yeah. It definitely planted a seed. And in that time you've obviously come a long way from hiring TaskRabbits. I'd love to hear a little bit of behind the scenes of, what your team has had to do when you have these moments, "Oh gosh, something goes viral, it's getting a million views."

What does that mean for ops?

Melissa Daniels, Senior Reporter, Modern Retail: The time Taylor, we've had, those stages along the way of different humps that we've had to overcome. So I think about a year after that, so we've always been keeping organic content at the core of everything we do. But about a year after that was when our business went from 7 million to $73 million in one year, and in one month we did twice as much revenue as we did the previous two years.

And that is, I think, probably the biggest, like most applicable situation that could be applied in how to take virality but really scale it and sustain it and keep it going. And what was happening then was three things. We had this really amazing organic content at our core coming from the brand. So we were taking all of those learnings, what's making people tick?

What's making people actually see a piece of content? And then before TikTok shop, they would leave the app and go to our website and buy something. So we had really good organic content. We invested heavily in the TikTok shop affiliates. So when we launched a new product, we had 25,000 brand ambassadors talking and scaling our message for us.

Not only that, then we could take not only our brand content, but then we could take their content that they were creating that was converting into sales 'cause they're all making money, and then we could put those on paid ads. So all of these things together created this like huge- profitable, efficient virality, and just this huge machine that we've really been able to scale and maintain, and-

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: We always joke it was the best of times and the worst of times.

'Cause as you can imagine, when you go through a viral moment, it's like-

Announcer: Yeah ...

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: you go from running a manageable, predictable business to something that, in our case, was like 10X in one month over any- Yeah ... previous month we've ever done. So it was overnight scaling our customer care team. Literally overnight.

Panic, like we need to 10X the size of this customer care team. It just like operationally we luckily had been in a fulfillment center that could handle it, but it does fast-track a lot of operational- ... hurdles you need to get over, so being prepared for that can be-

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: You suddenly have to do a lot of hiring. You had to think more about inventory, think more about forecasting. Good problems, like to be clear. These are good problems for a business to have. But that doesn't mean that you and your team don't have to like really get down to work- Yeah ... and muscle in on what's happening.

I do wanna kinda think about this from a broader perspective though, because a lot of times now when people hear the phrase going viral, they wanna roll their eyes, because it's, A, not sustainable, or B, not something that every brand can pull off, and, C, maybe something that doesn't even translate into sales, right?

It's just an awareness or discovery moment, but it doesn't necessarily mean those folks who are viewing are converting. So why even bother chasing it? And I'm curious, any advice or counters that you have to folks who are like, "Going viral is not the way."

Melissa Daniels, Senior Reporter, Modern Retail: We have a lot of thoughts.

I think-

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: Lay it

Melissa Daniels, Senior Reporter, Modern Retail: on ... to start, if you think about what it, what virality actually is, it means you have struck a chord with people, and you have- Connected with them emotionally, whether good or bad enough. In our case, we figured out if we get X amount of views, that translates to X amount of sales. So that is the core of what that is, and that is what you're trying to do as a brand.

So I think that is just the best learning you can have in terms of just taking as many learnings as you can from your organic content. Obviously going viral is not a sustainable way to build a brand long term. So it's ta- So what we do is we take those learnings, but then we also figure out how can we apply this to a diversified s- approach where we're diversifying our sales channels.

And it translates across every channel, predominantly our paid ads, but even in wholesale. I've walked into Ulta and said, "What is your best performing SKU in the store?" And they said, "Whatever is going viral."

So there's a lot of multifaceted approaches and reasons it's important. It doesn't replace needing diversified sales channels and a sustainable ad engine. But also like just in terms of getting your brand message out there, I think that's something that like some of our most viral moments from the last year have been free and like really sus- the biggest brand buil- building moments we've had have been because of virality.

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: Whenever anyone d- regardless of the stage of business asks us for advice on any marketing tactic- whether you're a new business, whether you're an established business, we always go back to is do you have strong organic content? Do you have a strong social media team? Because, and in our case, we have a lot of learnings. Shout out Lei, who's here. Everyone on our social media team is a creator. There is not one person on our social media team who can't get out their phone and make a TikTok or understand exactly what's trending on Instagram right now.

Like it is impossible in today's day and age to be a high-level social media manager who operates and manages the calendar if they also are not in the weeds of these algorithms and the platforms every single day. That gives you every... So I'll move on. We gotta move on. No, it's okay. But it's like that to me is like the only way you can learn what your consumers are connecting with emotionally about your product.

So it just I think a lot of times it just goes back to do you have a- the right social media team?

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: No, I think that's very practical advice because you wanna make sure that folks like you said, know how to just whip up their phone and make a TikTok, because you're in that meeting with your team when someone gets a really great idea.

You can do it right then and there. You don't need to go rent a studio and shoot something, right? And you can make it very or organic. I wanna return to something that you had mentioned before about this idea of leveraging what's organic into paid. Is there like a certain...

do you automate that at any point? Or is there like a metric- Yeah ... or how do you know what to amplify?

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: Yeah. It all starts from the process, which is so fun. But we have a weekly content creation process where I think that's where brands get tripped up. If you're planning five months out or three months out- you're doing your spring break campaign in December, like you're just not gonna be on top of it. Yeah. So we meet on a Monday, and we plan all of our content out for the next week. And we are creating in real time, and on Friday we're evaluating what is working- Yeah ... on organic, and that's evaluated based You don't need... we do have more advanced metrics, but is something getting 500,000 or more views? Is something, and it could be our content, it could be a creator's piece- Sure ... of content, and we're really looking at views, engagement as signals that this could be a good piece of content on ads. So we really try not to run stuff on ads before we've tested it on organic because that is, can be a real waste of money, and then your overall marketing efficiency is not good.

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I wanna return to this point that you had made earlier around thinking about the content itself. This original video that went viral for you, pretty risque, taking a stab at the patriarchy. You know- ... but can you do that every video?

Or, how do you figure out those tension points and those points of conversation you wanna have with your community that are gonna be risky enough to get eyeballs, but also not sabotage your brand value? Are there any other examples you have of things that, that have really worked for you to talk about?

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: Yeah. I think no matter what, you need to have the core values, and I feel like this is so over... watered down. It's so cliche. Yeah. It's watered down when someone says, "You have to have your values." But if you are operating from a place where you know your values and you can push the boundary while still being able to be proud of the piece of content you put out- you should be pushing the boundary. Our m- most viral piece of content last year was... It's so funny 'cause we spent... Early on, we spent all this money on once we started making money, we spent all this money on a an ad, and we... I don't know how much we spent. It was, like, with a studio, and- Yeah ... we spent a lot-

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: We gotta make an ad now.

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: We gotta make an ad. We're like, "We're making it. We gotta make an ad." And we spent so much time prepping to make this ad, and we spent all this money on the ad, and I think we ran it for one day, and we were like, "This sucks." No one likes it. No one's connecting with it. This was the biggest waste of money, but it was a good learning.

Sure. And last year, we had a team dinner where we announced the Cake's Childcare Credit, which is a fully reimbursable childcare program for our employees, and it was on Mother's Day, and we or right before Mother's Day, and we announced it to our team. And our social media manager took a five-second iPhone video when we announced it, and she put that up on Instagram, and it went completely viral, picked up by every a lot of stuff.

It was, like, just- Yeah ... we couldn't have... We always said, "If we paid for a Super Bowl ad, we wouldn't have gotten as many impressions as we did from that five-second iPhone video." And that is what's core to us.

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: And what I love about that example is it didn't have to do with your product necessarily.

It had to do with your business. And to me, that is key to the social moment we're in and in going viral. It's it's that transparency of who you actually are and how you're showing up. And in this case, you were showing up for your company in a way that really resonated with folks who are probably dying for their employer- Yeah

to do the same thing. Let me tell you. Yeah.

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: I always say people follow people, not brands. If anyone's seen the Staples baddie, ... I... Look up, okay, yeah, Staples. Yeah. I don't know if anyone's from Staples. Look it up, yeah. But people follow people, not brands. I didn't have a Cakes TikTok for the first year of our business.

I had a personal TikTok that I would-

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: Oh, wow.

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: I didn't realize. And then even when we ran- Yeah ... our first Cakes TikTok, it was Olivia from Cakes.

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: Cool, cool, cool.

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: And it was very personal because of that point. ... Also, if you haven't seen the Staples baddie, anyone who works in social media needs to know the Staples baddie.

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: I love this. I wanna condense the conversation a little bit because, you talked about when you started, and this all, it has all happened very fast for you, but we know that social media moves at the pace of, eight seconds basically. You talk about having a team who's just living and breathing this stuff.

What would you say are some of the biggest changes you've seen in, the kinda stuff that went viral three years ago- ... versus now, the trends that used to work that don't anymore? Are we still doing ASMR all the time?

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: Oh, yeah.

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: Yeah.

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: Yeah, not so much ASMR. Okay. You can't try too hard now.

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: Right.

Like- Yeah, it's obvious that you're trying- Yeah ... to get people to listen to your nails.

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think at the core what hasn't changed is if there's an emotional connection, you have a better chance of going viral. It can be anger, someone disagrees, someone's frustrated at the same thing. So at the core, the emotional connection is what will always lead to virality.

But when we first started, we do a lot of just talking to the camera, educating on the product, and that did really well. And I think everyone's probably seen UGC programs be a really big part of their strategy, and then the consumer is getting sick of being sold to in that way, unless it truly is, like- a real problem-solving video.

So now we do a lot more just it's like the easiest content that's doing right now, but it's like when you're not trying too hard. It's a five-second clip of B-roll, and there's text on screen about- ... how this is helping someone. It's just- And I- ... not trying too hard.

Melissa Daniels, Senior Reporter, Modern Retail: And I think that's why, just to Taylor's point earlier about having creators on the social team across all levels, and valuing them, and paying them properly.

Shout out creators. But it's it's really important that the creator mentality- Yeah ... because it is changing so fast, and it's almost impossible to keep up. And just finding new ways to breaking, to break through the noise, like that's something... We were one of the first brands in the first wave of being on TikTok before TikTok Shop.

Then we were one of the first brands in the wave being on TikTok Shop. So now that's something that we think about, how do we be on the forefront of whatever this next wave is? And where we're, we'll have certain periods that are really testing periods, where we don't put pressure on ourselves to drive any revenue or have a certain result.

It's let's just take a dedicated period of time to test something. So right now we're testing episodic content as our next-

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: Ooh ...

Melissa Daniels, Senior Reporter, Modern Retail: big initiative, which

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: plays into the thing we were talking about earlier.

Melissa Daniels, Senior Reporter, Modern Retail: We'll talk about that later. But episodic content we're really excited about, because even if you look at- We're big reality TV fans, but like even if you look at the kind of content that is on a traditional,

Network, like a Netflix, they are ta- they are bringing video podcasts onto Netflix now. They are taking talent from social media, creating shows around them, with the Mormon Wives show or- ... different businesses that started on social media and now they have a show on Netflix. So the way people are consuming content, not just on social media, but generally, is changing.

So we're trying to figure out, as a brand, how do we be on top of that curve and just find ways really just to get people's attention.

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: Yeah, I'm getting a lot more pitches about that lately of brands really exploring with more kind of like almost what I would call theatrical kind of content, where it still reads pretty off the cuff but it's thought- and planned out a little bit more ahead. I also really like this idea of Monday meetings that you had and just trying to get a jump on it every week so you're not missing something. And you're not at that moment where someone emails you saying, "Why aren't we doing, this trend-" yet? Why aren't we doing that?" Because you've already thought about it and we've already seen it.

Melissa Daniels, Senior Reporter, Modern Retail: True.

Casey Sarai, Co-Founder, CAKES Body: Yeah. Any other thoughts? I don't know if we have time for questions. We're going over time a little bit here. But any other thoughts? Any other favorite brands you have? Campaign moments?

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: I will just leave it on this, but I think we're at such an exciting time for specifically smaller or emerging brands, but any established brand too if they're willing to push the envelope. Because we have this wave of these unicorn brands, Popteen- ... Rhode Rare, Skims. Most of those have celebrity faces to them.

But I think the Popteen example is very inspirational to us because you have an everyday normal person as the face of this- ... who started with very little. And it was a proof point, and our business story is a proof point of the same thing, which is creativity can beat big budgets. It levels the playing field.

So it takes more work than just putting paid behind everything, but if you are creative, you have the right social media team, and you can win. And that's just a super exciting reality.

Melissa Daniels, Senior Reporter, Modern Retail: I love it. Super inspiring. Taylor Capano and Casey Serina,

Taylor Capuano, Co-Founder, CAKES body: everybody. Thank you.