Archive for October 31st, 2008
“I Want Sprinkles”: When You Don’t Control the Medium
One of my friends recently pointed me to a hilarious site called Cakewrecks, full of examples of “when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong.” It’s a really funny site. Then again, I find that store-bought cakes are kind of chuckle-worthy even when they turn out exactly as they’re supposed to.
My friend and colleague Jennifer Hill Robenalt, who has a great blog on PR and professional communication, once ordered a cake for a viewing party for the Survivor Season One Finale — you know, the season that brought rat-eating into casual conversation. Her conversation with the grocery store bakery went something like this: “Yes, I want a rat on it.” (Pause.) “Yes, I said a rat.” (Pause) “You know, like in Survivor?” The bakery worker was, of course, horrified that she was going to have to draw a big frosting rat on a cake, and had no idea why anyone would want that.
What’s funniest to me about the Cakewrecks site is the game of telephone quality to some of the cakes. There’s a miscommunication between the person ordering the cake and the person at the bakery, and the end result of that communication is committed to chocolate and sugar. This is my favorite one. As a bonus, “I want sprinkles” is a great catch-phrase — perfect for when you think you’ve been dealt an unfair hand and want to laugh it off.
As funny as it is, Cakewrecks offers a useful lesson for PR people about the media — you’re reliant on other people to transmit your message, and the responsibility falls to you to communicate that to the reporter or producer or host you’re working with. It’s good to remind yourself of that whenever you’re putting together a media advisory, or making a pitch, or as you’re coordinating with a client to make sure the website has pertinent information. Strive to make things as easy as possible for the media to transmit your information. Streamline. Read what you send out from a reporter’s point of view. And keep an eye out for social media press release templates — Shift Communications has a good one on PDF that you can easily track via Google. Though mainstream media is still used to seeing old-school press releases, with lead paragraphs containing the five Ws and spokesperson quotes embedded in paragraphs, I think there are some elements to a social media press release that are more user-friendly for the media than a standard release. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing some changes in the press release as we know it.
