When Your Brand Becomes Your Behavior

Welcome to this week's Blonde Intelligence. I am your host, Ms. Roni, and I always seek to give you exquisite cranial repertoire. A Fruity Pebble cake pop should be harmless, but the internet proved otherwise. I’m unpacking the “cake pop lady” drama where a big creator with a copyrighted cookbook and brand endorsements went after a newer baker, accused her of stealing a recipe, and set off a wave of online harassment that quickly turned into real business consequences.

We talk through the messy middle: what people misunderstand about recipe copyright versus copyrighting a cookbook, why box mix upgrades and ingredient swaps make recipe ownership a shaky claim, and how contradictory statements and aggressive language can turn a brand dispute into a reputational crisis. When endorsements get pulled and merch sales take a hit, the apology shows up and it forces the question you’re probably already asking: is it sincere, or is it only regret because the money changed?

Then I widen the lens to small business growth and reputation management. Collaborations can be quiet but lucrative, and long-term wins rarely look like instant results. If your character behind the scenes is ugly, it will eventually show up in your bottom line, whether you sell cake pops, content, or anything else. If this conversation hits home, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who runs a business, and leave a review telling me what you think makes an apology believable.

Transcript

Welcome And The Fiasco Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome to this week's Blonde Intelligence. I'm your host, Miss Ronnie, and I always seek to give you exquisite cranium repertoire. Many things have been going on this week, but I'm gonna talk about the cake pop lady fiasco. So this is the story to my understanding.

Can You Copyright A Recipe

SPEAKER_01 0:28

This lady, I cannot remember the name of her company, but she had some brand endorsements and a large following and had a copyrighted cookbook. Well, another girl started her business, and she, I guess, used the fruity pebble cake pop recipe, something, whatever, as inspiration. And she was like, she didn't even have her recipe. And so people was coming on saying things like you cannot copyright a single recipe, you can only copyright the book, which to me don't even make any sense to why even copyright the cookbook if you cannot copyright the recipes. I don't think that anybody would go and copy a whole book, or even if they wrote down the recipe word for word or similar, how would you eat how would that even stand up in court? Because most people who use box cake mixes, they will substitute the water for milk, you would substitute uh the oil for real butter, depending on what you're making, you may add some sour cream. I mean, it's different things that you will add. Some people use applesauce instead of eggs. I mean, everybody has their own thing when they're cooking, so I feel like the lady really went off the deep end calling herself trying to confront this girl who made a fruity pebble cake pop. You're using a box cake mix and a brand name cereal. So where is your originality coming in at where you have the audacity to even tell another grown person that they are lying?

Bullying Claims And The First Apology

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Okay, so the next thing is she started losing endorsements. So I'm gonna say that she had like two semi-major endorsements, and both of them were companies that had something to do with treat making. I know one of them was like a cake pop cutter where you just roll the dough out and like pop a cutter down instead of using the molds like a lot of people use, because I used to be a baker, so I I feel like this is like very ludicrous. She also was big enough to have merch sales, so she sold like merchandise that went along with her products, and I think that the issue was social media because I saw the video that she made where she was telling everybody what happened and she was saying like a lot of contradictory information. She used my recipe, but I don't know if she used my recipe. She said she never uh had my cookbook, but I don't know. I it's copyrighted, it's this, is that, and the attitude was not one of apologetic. So when she started losing money and lost those two endorsements, and people said that they wouldn't work with her, and people were calling her online bully and didn't like the way that she was speaking and all the profanity that she was using, then this lady issued an apology. But let me back up. The lady who got bullied issued an apology first, and she was like, I just started my business two weeks ago, and the I'm gonna call her the cake pop lady. The cake pop lady was an inspiration, and I tagged her in a post to show her the creations that I had made. She said, I never even seen her cookbook, and she told me that I was lying and that I was stealing and that she was gonna sue me and that I need to take the video down, and she was like, of course I took the video down. She said, but all this all this hate in her, I would, I don't know if I'm gonna call them fans, but followers were coming for her. So you would think that because a person has integrity that the next person would too. But sometimes it's not like that. And everybody don't have the same moral compass. So for this lady to speak like this, and I heard that this wasn't her first time going after smaller creators, um, then her follow followers would be more like her and would try to terrorize this lady. So she issued this apology and said that she was having this, that the cake pop lady was having a human moment and that she sincerely apologized and that she never meant to hurt anyone's feelings. Um it comes off as you did mean to hurt someone's feelings, because even after the girl came on crying and everything, I don't think anything was said until people started coming after her, until they stopped buying your merch, until your endorsements issue public statements saying that they would no longer work with you, then the apology came.

Endorsements Lost And Sincere Apology

SPEAKER_01 6:12

So the question is is the apology sincere or it was or was it only because money was lost? When a person or group of people lie on a business, I feel that the truth and action and growth speaks for itself. I mean, she could bully this lady and have these people go after her. I don't think that I would have stopped, I would have kept going because it's a freaking cake pop lady, and people have geographical areas where they service people. They cannot get everybody, and even if they had a whole geographical area sold up, they couldn't take every order. So I don't see the big issue about this lady being able to provide Fruity Pebble cake pops to the people in her area and people that know her and people that want to order from her because they may know her and not know this cake pop lady. So I'm just wondering, because the word on the curb is that this wasn't her first time bullying somebody behind the scenes, is anybody else gonna come forward with how she's treated them behind the scenes? Because a lot of opinion is that they don't believe the lady. They don't believe that the apology is sincere, she's just mad because things were not going her way because she do have like an aggressive, I'm not even gonna call it an undertone, or I'm gonna say an aggressive personality.

Integrity, Collaboration, And Long-Term Growth

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Sometimes in business, your character and actions behind the scenes can affect your bottom lines in ways that you cannot imagine. I feel that maybe the cake pop lady, allegedly being a mean girl behind the scenes, lost her bottom line in ways that would require a rebranding, maybe renaming, um using AI for her videos, hiding her face, maybe not being on YouTube, maybe having a brick and mortar shop. I don't know. But sometimes business collaborations are quiet but lucrative and required to build over time. I had a client one time that liked to drink. So I decided that the merch was going to be shot glasses. And in my mind, the the local collaboration goal was to find local liquor stores that would carry the shot glasses while the marketing dollars went to building the artist's exposure, because I was working with a musical artist. And I felt like this would have been a good collaboration for what we were trying to do, because it's like even if the customer didn't know your music, but like the shot glass, eventually the two would cross paths, and that was a way to grow exposure for you know artist exposure outside of music, you know. So I guess it was gaining potential fans uh who would buy the merch through the liquor store collaboration. Well, needless to say, this artist wanted instant results from me, which was unrealistic considering that he had been an artist for several, several, several years and hadn't even developed any merchandise. And I don't understand the one that the instant results. It was not working towards that goal, and then when you work towards that goal, as in the cake pop lady, you have to be able to continue to grow. And character and strength means a lot, especially to me. Collaborations is business growth and reputation and how you move behind the scenes can affect your bottom line one way or another, and that's just not in the cake pop business, that's in any business. You have to lead with integrity because you may get some people just like you to work with you, but a person of integrity is not gonna work with that bullshit.

Closing Thoughts And Podcast Promo

SPEAKER_01 10:55

But that's all that I have for you today, and I'll see you next week. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Hey girl, let me tell you about this podcast. Girl, everybody has a podcast these days. But this one interviews new and interesting indie artists. It's called Indie Artist Music Hustle with Blunt Intelligence. Really? Where can I find it? It's on all podcasting platforms, streams live on social media and on rpentradio.com. What you say it was called again? It's called Indie Artist Music Hustle with Blonde Intelligence. Girl, I'm gonna have to check her out. Give it a check, girl.