Turns out a video about a Finsta can be a good brand opportunity—but only if you move fast.
Late last month, TikTok user @badvina posted a five-second video with the caption, “POV: you and your sisters make a fake cake business Instagram to stalk ppl and now you have five orders.” The context of what’s now been referred to as “creeper cakes” was otherwise minimal, but engagement was maximal: the video has racked up more than 77 million views and 13 million likes. Brand interest, as many noted in the comments, was similarly sky-high.
The brand that perhaps made the most of the marketing opportunity was the Asian-fusion chain P.F. Chang’s, which posted an early comment on the video that got more than 1.3 million likes, the most-liked comment the brand has seen to date, Sonika Patel, global CMO of P.F. Chang’s, told us. Not only that, the brand delivered five cakes to the original poster—all in less than six hours.
“The whole thing has been quite inspiring, because we’ve seen a lot of great brand love and positive sentiment on social media,” Patel told Marketing Brew.
Piece of cake
As it turns out, teamwork really can make the dream work for brands looking to stand out online. “It was a collaborative team effort in making this happen in just a matter of hours,” Patel said.
The events of the viral cake day began when P.F. Chang’s community management team commented on @badvina’s post in the morning—a decision that Patrick Benson, P.F. Chang’s senior manager, social media, said was born out of a larger approach to the brand’s outbound community management strategy, which is to empower the restaurant chain’s social team to engage online with minimal (if any) approval requirements.
“They’re constantly scanning for relevant cultural moments and ways that we can be a part of conversation online,” Benson told us.
By mid-afternoon, it became clear that the comment was hitting the mark, and Benson said his team felt compelled to do something more. At that point, the social team engaged P.F. Chang’s marketing team, market partners, operations partners, and the restaurant nearest Balvina to explain the opportunity and make a cake delivery happen. They also DMed Balvina to get her address and let her know that a surprise was on the way.
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Benson said it was all mostly coordinated via phone calls and texts to keep things moving along.
“I always encourage social media managers to lean into text message, Teams, Slack, whatever it may be,” Benson said. “Not everything needs to go through email or all these levels of approvals. You have to be able to move quick and be nimble to show up in these conversations and do it in a timely manner.”
In the meantime, Balvina posted an update to her original video, noting that she and her sister were waiting on PR gifts after seeing all of the brand engagement on the original video. At that point, the race felt officially on. “We definitely wanted to be first, but we wanted to show up in a way that was authentic and true to our brand,” Benson said.
Around 5pm, the restaurant team was preparing the delivery, which arrived shortly after Balvina posted her PR-request video. A follow-up video showing off the cake delivery currently has more than 1.2 million views and 100,000 likes, while the brand’s BTS video has more than 35,000 views.
Beyond the engagement numbers, Benson said his team has been encouraged by the social sentiment and earned media that have come from the stunt.
“While views and likes are nice for us, we don’t want to be the brand that’s just dropping comments to get likes and trend-jack,” he said. Because the original video referenced cake, one of the restaurant’s dessert offerings, Benson said it felt like a natural opportunity.
After the success of that day’s events for P.F. Chang’s, the brand officially tapped Balvina as a brand partner with a paid post about its Girls’ Night promotion. For now, Patel said that’s the extent of the partnership, but she noted that it could evolve in the future.
For now, the team will continue to monitor for its next fake-cake-business-sized opportunity.
“Speed matters,” Patel said. “That’s what’s proven here.”
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