Is virality actually bad for business?

A guide on how disruptive brands sustain growth after an initial viral spike.

Watch the full webinar to access even deeper insights about how high-growth brands scale using bold brand moves. Learn from senior leaders like Kim Chappell, opens in new tab, the Chief Brand Officer at Bobbie; Alex Edelstein, opens in new tab, the VP of Marketing at Graza; Monik Ladha, opens in new tab, the Director of Brand Strategy at TRG; Janet Gallent, opens in new tab, an Associate Clinical Professor at Fordham University; and Leanne Tomasevic, opens in new tab, Head of Insights UK & US at Tracksuit.

You know the story. A disruptive brand enters the market with a burst of energy, gaining momentum through social media. You start to see it everywhere: on the shelves of your favourite creators' videos, or on your Instagram feed, because a friend liked their photo. But newness or novelty can only last so long. At the end of the day, sustainable growth has to be carefully cultivated.

Take Rhode, for example. It made headlines in early 2025, opens in new tab for its $1 billion sale to e.l.f Beauty, but a recent report revealed that sales for the quarter ending June 30 were down $48 million from the same time last year. As a result, e.l.f’s share price fell by about 7 percent. An article by Puck, opens in new tab suggested that this could be attributed to Rhode’s relative lack of product innovation – the only new product it released was the glazing mist – but also that “inevitably, the unsustainable growth that helped the company achieve its current stature will start to decelerate; early adopters will start to fall off as the brand scales and become less cool; and retail expansion will forever change the business.”

In our webinar with high-growth disruptor brands Graza and Bobbie, this was a topic top-of-mind. Both have experienced an accelerated trajectory. Graza, opens in new tab was founded in 2021 and is now the fifth biggest olive oil company in the USA. Bobbie, opens in new tab began in 2018 and was named one of TIME100’s most influential companies in 2025 and was valued at $388 million in 2023.

So how do you sustain this growth, to continue climbing after the initial “viral” moments and set yourself up to continue building a brand that lasts?

Ultimately, we found that progress comes from slowing down to think. Not chasing speed, or scale for its own sake, but operating on purpose; observing what other brands in the category are missing, and responding with intention.

Lesson one: See what others miss.

⭐ Find – and address – the unmet needs of your audience.

Smart high-growth brands make legacy categories feel alive again. Both Graza and Bobbie understood what “normal” looked like for its category… and then did something different.

“Seeing what others miss” has an official term, a more serious one that might put into perspective how important this is for brands: disruptive innovation.

Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation, opens in new tab argues that disruption doesn’t happen when new players attack incumbents head-on. It happens when they spot non-consumption.

Say you enter a category, find that underserved segment and offer them something different – which could take the shape of lower cost, product innovation, or a value-driven proposition.

Bobbie illustrates this theory pretty perfectly. They rightfully identified the pitfalls of the infant formula category in the US, which had been operating in a grey zone. It was technically regulated, but with some information gaps that left new parents in the dark during an emotionally heightened time. Rather than wait for legal reform, Bobbie decided to adopt the stricter European ingredient standards, reformulating its product to meet them while still complying with US rules. That early decision redefined what responsibility looked like in the category.

Graza took on this challenge in a different way. It recognized that olive oil was an everyday, common pantry staple that people didn’t necessarily think much about; just part of the furniture. But through transparent sourcing, distinct design and an aspirational tone, it redefined the product as something that brought people joy in the kitchen. Its iconic squeezy bottle genuinely changed behaviour, with people proudly displaying the product on their open kitchen shelves and using it with confidence.

“It made a lot of home chefs feel very professional in their home environment,” Alex Edelstein, VP of Marketing for Graza said.

Bobbie were recently named one of TIME100's most influential companies. Pictured here are founders Laura Modi and Sarah Hardy.

Lesson two: Virality might build hype, but trust builds brands.

⭐ Don’t be afraid to make tough decisions.

Earning and keeping trust can mean making difficult decisions – like prioritizing the customers you already have over the ones you could bring on, a lesson that Bobbie learned well back in 2022, when there was a nationwide infant formula shortage. They realised during the shortage that very soon they wouldn’t have enough infant formula for their existing subscribers if they kept expanding their customer base, so they shut new registrations off, resulting in a 70,000-strong waitlist, leaving $300 million on the table. To this day they call this the “Bobbie Promise, opens in new tab”, which means that when you sign up, you have a guaranteed amount of formula for you.

⭐ Track trust over time.

“I think about trust every day. I measure trust; I’m tracking that statement in Tracksuit every month,” Kim Chappell, Chief Brand Officer at Bobbie, said. Tracksuit’s own data shows that it is one of the biggest drivers of conversion across our categories – meaning, people are much more likely to convert down the funnel if they trust in your brand.

⭐ Building trust is holistic – and has to be earned.

Everything you put out into the world can either build, or erode, trust. That means emails, social content, press, podcasts – everything. So think about the stories you’re telling, or what you can do to bring the customer along to help them understand why your brand is making the decisions they’re making.

⭐ Identify opportunities to build trust.

Although social media has allowed so many brands to build strong profiles at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising, it is a channel that can breed distrust. Graza identified this, describing it as the “tension [that comes with] being too viral and the perception of not being a quality product to back that virality”. To them, TV was a big opportunity to build trust. “TV boosts the effects of pretty much every advertising channel that you might use,” Monik Ladha, the Director of Strategy at TRG said.

Lesson three: Stay close to your customer to identify magic moments where your brand can win.

There is an element of brand marketing that is “magic”: an indescribable gut-feel that what you’re doing is the right thing. Sometimes, it’s impossible to wait for the “right” data to act, especially when you’re a brand trying to capture the attention and pulse of the moment. But when you get the bets right, that’s when the numbers follow. In this case, metrics can matter in a different way – they become proof that that gut-feel is working. “It’s the immeasurable magic that drives the metrics,” as Leanne said in the webinar.

⭐ Think about “community” outside of its traditional bounds.

Bobbie does community in a multitude of ways, from gathering them in real life, to even getting customers on a Zoom session with the Bobbie founders – a meaningful, achievable way to listen to their feedback and make sure they feel like they’re being heard. “Especially when we first launched Bobbie, it was right after COVID, and COVID moms were so lonely. Now parents are finding these micro-communities and places to gather and show up – sometimes that gets them more excited than a promo code.”

When it comes to community, take a step back and understand that not all of it has to be measured. After Bobbie held a real-life activation to mark its National Women’s Soccer League sponsorship with soccer player Alex Morgan, opens in new tab (below), inviting its community to participate in the celebrations, the team were thinking about how to measure its success. “One of the girls who flew down to San Diego is a new mom on our team, a data analyst. And on the follow-up call we were like, ‘How do we measure success?’ And Claire said, ‘There’s no way to measure it. I was in tears talking to customers.’ And I was like, ‘Let’s take it to finance.’”

⭐ Understanding your customers will allow you to make better decisions.

Knowing what will resonate with your customers by constant listening will allow you to make more confident brand swings, such as brand collaborations and partnerships – and ultimately, create that magic for them, too. “We made a pistachio olive ice cream, opens in new tab, for example, and did a hummus collaboration, opens in new tab,” Alex said. “There’s no data that necessarily supports that this will be a huge success, but we’ve built this platform that’s intended to just be making really good stuff. It all comes from a place of: this is going to be delicious; let’s make it happen. Finding brands that have similar values and customer bases and, ultimately, bringing people together – it’s all about strengthening relationships with customers.” These gut-feel decisions build memory and positive associations over time, ultimately leading to real business outcomes by strengthening mental availability.

Lesson four: The brand is the business.

⭐ Give your customers stories to tell.

When your product is table stakes (that is, it works the way it should), then carving out a space in the market where your brand is much more than your product is crucial. “Instead of the word-of-mouth referral just being, ‘Oh, my baby digested it’, make it so that your customer tells a new mom friend, ‘You have to try this company, I love them so much because I went to one of their events and met so many amazing moms.” Experience is a special thing. It’s the same story with Graza – people recommend them not just because of the amazing product, but because of the connection they feel with the brand through its expanded brand universe.

⭐ Brand is a long game, so set yourself up for success with Tracksuit as your strategic ally.

Modern, social-media savvy brands often experience quick sugar highs with viral moments, but sustaining that growth can be tricky. Tracksuit can work like your strategic ally, helping marketers prove and protect that long-term compounding effect brand has on business.

Brand-builders use Tracksuit to show internal stakeholders how immeasurable magic moments, trust-building choices and customer closeness all compound in brand health over time. The best way to tell that story is with an always-on pulse that captures how brand-building continues to pay off. As Monik said in the webinar, “Brand health tracking conveniently sits between your campaign and your commercial objectives, so it has the very fun ability to be both a lagging and a leading indicator of campaign effectiveness and potential commercial outcomes.”

Both Bobbie and Graza track their brand health with Tracksuit. “I always say to the executive team, to the growth team, ‘Brand is a long game. It’s not here to drive your shot in the arm sales. We’re building something different. So I have to really remind people, 6 to 8 months is the pay off for any big brand activations… I feel like a broken record sometimes. Bringing people along is really important across the company,” Kim said. 

Ensuring that internal teams, including your CEO, board and other senior leaders, are rallied around one set of metrics for brand is key for long-term success.

Watch the full webinar to access even deeper insights about how high-growth brands scale using bold brand moves.