How social-first brands like Cakes and Beis sustain viral moments

Three years later, the company’s logistics are in a much stronger place, with annual revenues over $100 million and wholesale distribution through Ulta. But Cakes hasn’t stopped going viral, with last year’s announcement of the company’s paid-child-care policy garnering national headlines and outperforming studio-produced ads.

“If you think about what virality actually is, it means you’ve struck a chord with people, and you’ve connected with them emotionally, whether good or bad,” Sarai said. “At the core, the emotional connection is what will always lead to virality.”

A viral social moment is far from guaranteed — and even when achieved, it may not immediately drive sales. But some social-dominant brands, like Cakes Body, have figured out how to reverse-engineer the elements of viral videos to create more big moments that drive growth. At the same time, they’ve learned how to prep their back-end operations for any potential sales influx.

At eTail Palm Springs, brands and marketers discussing social strategy weighed the pros and cons of “going viral” and its impact. Sarai and Capuano from Cakes specifically discussed how the brand kept going viral and experiencing massive growth because of the consistency and volume of their posts in the early days on TikTok.

At one point, Cakes was working with 25,000 brand ambassadors and amplifying the best output into paid content. This helped the company achieve more revenue in one month than it had in the prior two years of operation. “All of these things together created this huge, profitable, efficient virality — just this huge machine that we’ve really been able to scale and maintain,” Sarai said.

Behind the scenes, that can lead to a need for more resources. Sarai said the company once had to fill about 15 new customer service positions within 24 hours to handle the volume of inquiries. “It does fast-track a lot of operational hurdles you need to get over,” Capuano said.

To sustain that growth, the company has an in-house team of social media creators who aim to create more of the authentic and organic content that first helped it land on the map. Capuano said it’s critical to have a team that lives and breathes what’s trending on social media in order to stay on top of what’s hot, rather than risk being too late. The team also has the instinct to “whip out their phones” when something is happening behind the scenes that may resonate with followers — like when Sarai and Capuano made their child-care policy announcement during a team outing.

To stay current with production timelines, the team meets on Mondays to plan content for the week and create it in real time. By Friday, it’s looking at what was most successful to amplify with paid ads.

Madison Hilson, co-founder at women’s outdoor apparel brand Seniq, said it can be challenging to balance inventory forecasts with the potential for virality. The company is nearly two years old and runs a direct-to-consumer site as well as wholesale accounts with retailers like REI, Backcountry and Title Nine.

But when Seniq did its first ski apparel drop in December, a season’s worth of inventory sold out in five days after a viral video teasing the collection got over 1 million views.

In the immediate aftermath, that meant disappointed fans and would-be customers. But from a strategic standpoint, it taught the team a lot about what formulas can work: in this case, an ASMR-style video showing the zips, velcro and pockets of the ski jacket.

Adeela Hussain Johnson, CEO of the luggage brand Béis, said the company has learned to plan for viral moments, especially when new items are dropping. It intentionally launches some products that are intended to sell out and drive scarcity — for example, styles in trendy colors that won’t be ongoing staples. In those moments, she said, the company also notices more sales of other products.

“When we go viral on an item, the next question is: What else is going to take off? And so, from an operational standpoint, it’s rarely just that one item,” she said. “We’ll usually see our top items have multiple layers of growth.”

But knowing demand will outstrip supply runs the risk of disappointed customers. At Béis, Hussain Johnson said the company tries to use it to their advantage and build future sales.

“You have to be way more nimble, and you have to be OK with those moments when you’re stocked out,” she said. “So, what do you do? We pre-order. We build hype. We do wait lists. We talk about when it’s going to come back, and we build demand. And then when it comes back in stock, it’s a moment.”