Beauty brand Cakes wants to turn its TikTok virality into an owned media strategy

Cakes Body founders (and twin sisters) Capuano and Casey Sarai largely built their business through founder-led storytelling and TikTok viral videos rather than spending on traditional brand marketing. The company, which appeared on Shark Tank, launched in 2022 and grossed $100 million in sales in three years. Cakes has taken over social media feeds with its own founder-led social media content, creator content becoming popular, similar to brands like Bogg Bag or Stanley. (Read Cakes Body’s advice for TikTok success here.)

Now, as Cakes expands its footprint and boosts business, the co-founders are using Cakes Media to build out social-first content and owned media designed to live across digital and streaming platforms. The company hired former Red Bull executive Caley Wildermuth as head of content and rolled out its first piece of work on YouTube last week — a 57-minute documentary with more than 371,600 views so far. Cakes Media’s full length episodes will be mined and clipped for short-form content platforms.

‘Entertainment has become the new price of admission’

Cakes is building out an internal entertainment arm instead of hiring a traditional creative agency because of control.

“To have that humanness and personality come through, it’s hard to outsource that [organic social content] to an agency,” Capuano said. Cakes still outsources things like media buying to agency partners.

Cakes joins a running list of brands, including Red Bull Media House, creating their own studios to roll out television shows and films — or microseries. “Entertainment has become the new price of admission. Brands must earn attention by offering entertaining content,” Daryl Giannantonio, chief strategy officer at VML told Digiday in an emailed statement.

Cakes Media is funded via the brand’s top-of-funnel or brand marketing budget for now, Capuano added, and declined to outline exactly how much the first installment of Cakes Media content cost.

The halo effect of virality

Cakes’ organic, word-of-mouth-style TikTok virality led to what Capuano describes as a “halo effect” that significantly improved media efficiency, brand awareness, brand consideration, and overall business profitability.

“It will help us increase the pie [or share of audience] that we’re currently talking to because that obviously is getting more expensive to do,” she said, referring to rising digital ad costs. 

The goal is to build long-term audience engagement through its own media rather than traditional advertising — something more brands have been thinking about as digital ad costs rise and brands look to entertain shoppers rather than push a hard sale. Hence, more brands are revisiting their marketing budgets to strike a better balance between brand and performance.

“You can’t just sit at the bottom of search and catch people,” said Olamma Nzeribe-Williams, social activation manager at Media by Mother. 

Cakes Media is in a test-and-learn phase for now to determine which content types resonate most with audiences. Although, a second season of original programming is in development with plans to explore creator-led programming, per Cakes.

“The focus right now is building the audience and creating this vehicle for our top-of-funnel brand building,” said Capuano.