The Fake News Of E-Commerce: How Sketchy Sites Use Facebook Ads To Scam Customers And Rip Off Brands
ey everyone! I want to show you how to put the Ultimate Shefit Bra on,” says Sara Moylan, holding up a hot pink sports bra printed with her company’s logo. With her fitness-competitor physique, she looks like she knows what she’s talking about. The demonstration takes less than a minute, but to anyone who’s experienced the indignities of most sports bras, it’s oddly transfixing: The bra zips up in front like a vest, adjusts along the band with a strip of Velcro, and, with one swift pull from the front of the straps, lifts and separates like a push-up (just remember to hoist up “the girls” beforehand, Moylan advises). Who among us wouldn’t be compelled to watch such a video if it came up on our Facebook feeds? Not many, it seems. Since it was uploaded in March, the demo has garnered more than 7 million views, driving hundreds of thousands of customers to the Shefit site, where many have shelled out $62 plus tax for the patented design. Only Shark Tank, which Moylan appeared on in 2016, provided a bigger boost, giving her a platform to grow her business from a Kickstarter-funded startup, as well as explain her idea: a sports bra that would let women customize their fit, provide enough support for high-intensity workouts (so she wouldn’t have to wear two bras at once), and accommodate fluctuations in size, which Moylan, as a mother of four, understood as an inevitability. The Facebook video was far simpler — it was shot for free in a friend’s fitness studio — but something about it just clicked. As the views climbed, Moylan recalls, “We stepped back and we said, ‘Why did this video go viral?’ It wasn’t because of the surroundings. It went viral because everyone was like, ‘Oh my god, this is so cool. This is different.’ And then people just started sharing it and things just went crazy.” Read more at Racked.
