Inside the ‘Four Seasons baby’ meme and her family’s stay at the hotel

When Stefanie O’Brien jokingly captioned a now-viral video of her nieces excitedly shouting “Meee!” when asked who wanted to visit the Four Seasons Orlando with “If the @Four Seasons Hotels is looking for a baby ambassador my niece got you 😂🤣😂🤣😂,” she never anticipated the company would actually take her up on that offer. But over Memorial Day weekend the luxury hotel and resort chain hosted O’Brien; her nieces, 13-month-old Kate and 4-year-old Madelyn; their parents, Bailey and Will Wise; and her parents and siblings at its Orlando, Florida, location—which has been catapulted into virality by O’Brien’s TikTok. Kate, affectionately dubbed “the Four Seasons baby” or “fully conscious baby” by TikTok, became an internet darling when O’Brien’s video blew up on the platform earlier this month. TikTok users were fascinated and amused by Kate’s attentive stare and unexpectedly adultlike response to her mom’s off-camera query—particularly, her raised pointer finger, which viewers interpreted as a sophisticated gesture akin to lifting one’s pinky finger while drinking tea. @sobrizzle If the @Four Seasons Hotels ♬ original sound - Stefanie O’Brien “You tag a Starbucks in a video and you’re like, ‘Oh, maybe the brand will respond, maybe they don’t.’ You never picture that it would turn into something like this,” O’Brien told Ad Age. “I can’t even wrap my head around it, to be honest. Brands pay millions and millions of dollars to get this kind of exposure. And this is all just so organic and authentic, and it’s just really cool to see how people are responding to it.” As of this writing, O’Brien’s video has amassed more than 62 million views and nearly 8 million likes, along with roughly 52,000 comments. Kate’s surprisingly lucid reaction gave rise to her “fully conscious baby” nickname, which soon exploded into a meme where users edited O’Brien’s video to include extravagant, verbose narration playing off Kate’s reaction. One such video with more than 30 million views imagines Kate’s response to be “I would be absolutely exuberated to join the family on a voyage to Four Seasons Orlando.” The video, initially filmed by Kate’s mom and O’Brien’s older sister, Bailey Wise, in an effort to convince her parents to join them on their upcoming trip to Orlando, quickly caught the attention of the Four Seasons, too. O’Brien and the company began exchanging TikTok DMs four days after she posted the video, she said, and they soon swapped DMs for texts and Zoom calls after the Four Seasons invited the family to stay in the presidential suite instead of the standard room they had originally booked for their long weekend in Orlando. @fourseasons #Stitch with @Stefanie O’Brien Let the adventure begin @Stefanie O’Brien fam 🏰✨@FourSeasonsOrlando #LuxuryTravel #FamilyTravel #LoveFourSeasons ♬ original sound - Four Seasons Hotels We Are Social Canada, the social agency of record for Four Seasons Global, worked with the brand on the collab. The Four Seasons team communicated extensively with O’Brien, who lives in New York, and Wise, whose family resides in Tampa, Florida, as they prepared the family’s rooms for their three-day stay, Wise said. They asked her about everything from their favorite snacks and activities to what they enjoyed doing most when staying at a hotel, she recalled. “Coming from the other side of it—I’m the one who’s not really on social media, I like to lay low—it was so funny to hear them talking about having meetings about us during the week to just plan for this,” she added. “That was such a crazy thought to me.” When the family arrived at the Four Seasons Orlando on May 24, “truly everywhere you looked and every room you walked in, there was a huge surprise,” Wise said, including “huge line of people” greeting them as they walked through the door; a closet full of princess dresses for Kate and Madelyn; and a selection of several shirts for their dad, Will—a cheeky nod to the media attention he received for his unbuttoned shirt in the viral video. @fourseasons Fully conscious and utterly fabulous at Four Seasons Orlando. 👑 #LoveFourSeasons #LuxuryTravel #FamilyTravel #FourSeasonsOrlando #FullyConsciousBaby ♬ MILLION DOLLAR BABY (VHS) - Tommy Richman The luxury hotel chain also leaned heavily into “the way people were personifying Kate based on the video … as this fancy baby,” O’Brien added. The Four Seasons team outfitted her with a custom tuxedo, a robe and pool towel embroidered with the words “Boss Baby” and glamorous meals such as gold truffle pasta, she said. Even her bottles of milk were served on silver platters, Wise added. O’Brien shared four videos from their three-day hotel stay, including one of Kate digging into the truffle pasta while donning her tuxedo and another in which she’s being fanned by large leaves while sitting on her “Boss Baby” towel by the pool. Though she discussed potential ideas for social content with the Four Seasons team ahead of time, they all quickly discovered, “You can plan all you want, but when you have a 13-month-old, all those plans just go to shit,” O’Brien said. “It was kind of a ‘We’re going to get what we get [scenario],’ because a baby’s going to do what the baby wants to do.” @sobrizzle Think it’s a yes on the gold truffle pasta ☝️🍝✨ #FourSeasonsBaby #FourSeasonsOrlando ♬ Me Too - Meghan Trainor Case in point: O’Brien and the Four Seasons team anticipated the video of Kate eating pasta would only take about two minutes to film, she said. But when they tried to lead Kate away from the plate of pasta to start on the next piece of content, the baby was “too upset to leave the pasta” and they had to wait for her to finish eating to avoid a tantrum, Wise said. O’Brien’s videos from the family’s hotel stay have collectively garnered an additional 43 million views and thousands of comments on TikTok. Dozens of commenters dubbed Kate the new “CEO of the Four Seasons Orlando,” while one joked, “how sweet of her to take you guys with her.” @sobrizzle This will do. ☝️ #FourSeasonsBaby #FourSeasonsOrlando ♬ original sound - Stefanie O’Brien “We love a viral moment, and especially one with such a sweet new fan,” the Four Seasons wrote in an email to Ad Age. “Our Orlando property has seen a healthy increase in engagement and growth on their social channels and we have our smallest fan to thank!” The company declined to comment further on its partnership with Kate and her family. In a LinkedIn post, Megan Page, the company’s senior director of global integrated PR and social communications, wrote, “How do you ensure your brand values shine through while you engage with audiences meaningfully, authentically, humorously and quickly? The answer is together. You do it with a huge group of talented people that lend their expertise, imaginations, give up their personal time and band together. With that and the luck to connect with people like Stefanie O’Brien (who posted the original video) and the Wise family (the stars of the video) gold truffle pasta moments can happen.” Since May 16, the “Four Seasons baby” trend has generated nearly 330 million total views across associated hashtags such as #fourseasonsbaby and #fullyconsciousbaby, according to a report from social intelligence platform ViralMoment and social media agency bknown. For comparison, the recent “man in finance” TikTok trend received roughly 50.4 million views across hashtags tied to the viral song, per the report. Additionally, O’Brien’s video amassed more than 28 million views within just 48 hours, while creator Megan Boni’s original “man in finance” video has drawn 33.1 million overall views since April 30, according to the report. “Love it or hate it, TikTok virality is the heartbeat of culture right now,” wrote Brendan Kaminsky, the founder of bknown, in the report. “In my 10+ years working and covering social media, I cannot recall a viral moment that has been more universally loved.” Read more about the ‘man in finance’ moment on TikTok And, like the “man in finance” trend, several brands played into the virality surrounding O’Brien’s video on TikTok. Some, such as Truly Beauty, Evry Jewels and Tarte Cosmetics, leaned into a trend where three people reenact the original video, with one of the three participants cradled like Kate. @tartecosmetics pov: you work at #tarte 😜 #fullyconsciousbaby #tartecosmetics ♬ original sound - Stefanie O’Brien 40 under 40 entries are open The final deadline for nominations is Aug. 2 Enter here Others, including United Airlines, Dormify, Five Below and skincare brand Bubble, leveraged the audio from the original video to illustrate brand-related scenarios that might be as exciting to people as a visit to the Four Seasons Orlando was for Kate and her sister. Brands such as Top Golf and the Atlanta Hawks basketball team opted to embrace the original “fully conscious baby” meme, with Top Golf using similarly opulent language to describe a trip to one of its venues. @topgolf conscious baby 🤝 topgolf #fyp #topgolf 🎥 @Stefanie O’Brien ♬ original sound - Stefanie O’Brien This partnership may just be the first of many between the Four Seasons and Kate’s family, as O’Brien said she and her sister are “continuing conversations” with the company, and the Four Seasons has “definitely voiced to us that they’d like to continue [working] with us, as well.” She also noted that “pretty much every massive brand” has contacted the family, but declined to name which ones. “We’re taking things step-by-step, and it’s really fun to watch,” O’Brien said. “We’re excited to see where little Kate goes next—and we hope that she brings us with her.” Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here

Inside the ‘Four Seasons baby’ meme and her family’s stay at the hotel

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