Social Media
Cakes Body Builds $100M Brand Into a Media Company
Cakes Body, now at $100M in annual gross revenue, has launched Cakes Media with a YouTube founding documentary as bigger brands like Gap and UPS pile into owned entertainment.
Cakes Body has hit $100 million in gross revenue per year for the last two years, and now its founders are spending that credibility on a media company. In September, the brand launched Cakes Media, a division focused on owned entertainment, original programming, and social-first content, co-founders Taylor Capuano and Casey Sarai confirmed.
Its first release, a feature-length YouTube documentary called Viral: The New American Dream, arrived this week and tells the story of how Cakes came to be.
Cakes started in 2022 with $5,000 from each co-founder's personal savings, Capuano said. The money covered initial inventory and basic product photography. Nothing was left for marketing, so Capuano became the brand's face on social media, documenting the build in real time. The company, which primarily sells nonadhesive nipple covers and has expanded into adhesive tapes and training bras, now ranks in the top 1% of sellers on TikTok Shop, per Capuano and the company's internal data.
The move into owned entertainment is not a direct revenue play, Capuano said. It is a bet on audience connection. "The thesis is people follow people, not brands," she said. "Top-of-funnel growth, that's all about awareness, and that's all about connecting with people. You don't need a Super Bowl ad or a big billboard campaign necessarily to do that. I actually think you can do that in a more effective way if it's through authentic content."
She pointed to a pattern in the brand's own data. "We've seen our most viral content for the last three years be mission-driven content, completely unrelated to product, and all ships rise when that happens," Capuano said. "We see all of our sales metrics go up, and retailers be more interested in working with us, and talent more attracted to working with us, so I think that will be a natural byproduct of the success of this."
Founder-led content carries measurable weight. Research from Evolve Media Agency found it drives engagement rates 2x–4x higher than other brand content, and an analysis from Conbersa, an agentic hardware infrastructure for social media, found it can outperform UGC on brand trust and conversion.
To run Cakes Media, the company hired Caley Wildermuth, a former Red Bull social producer, as head of content. Wildermuth said Cakes's organic social roots give it an edge. "There's so few brands where you can actually say, 'Our story started because of social media,'" she told Marketing Brew. "Everything has that throughline of, what is working on organic social, and how can we own it? Because we actually already are in this space."
Wildermuth is developing reality series and man-on-the-street formats, a tonal shift from the documentary, which covers Capuano's emotional reactions to social media negativity and the effects of the 2025 Palisades Fire. The founding story was the "logical place to start and necessary context" for future content, Capuano said, but that content will move beyond the founders. "There are so many amazing personalities at our brand, and I think that's the thing I'm excited for too…being able to craft the content in a way that brings light to some of those other personalities," she said.
Cakes Media enters a crowded field. Gap hired Pam Kaufman as chief entertainment officer earlier this year and has since released a short film and a partnership with boy band Just Your Type. Red Bull, Dick's Sporting Goods, and UPS are investing in content from social series to full-length features, while Maybelline, Crocs, and Starbucks are testing soapy microdramas.
Capuano and Wildermuth argue smaller scale is the advantage: Cakes can make entertainment, including "some drama" within the business, that bigger brands never will. "At the end of the day, our No. 1 goal is to connect with people and consumers," Capuano said, "so we're really not shying away." The next phase of Cakes Media will test whether founder authenticity scales into durable owned media.
Original: conbersa.ai
Priya Raman
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Correspondent covering industry trends and analytics at Marketing Herald.
