Why cakes make great PR
Success is sweet and everyone loves cake – right?
Cakes make a great PR opportunity to celebrate business anniversaries, milestones and product launches. Here’s why, alongside some of the cakes I’ve had the pleasure of helping to create, promote and eat.
Cakes have great visual impact for the media
Every newspaper and TV station needs a great image to run alongside a story. Cakes make a great visual impact. The creativity involved also means they can convey quite complex ideas in a fun and simple way. This cake created to celebrate the 50 year anniversary of the National Trust’s work at Formby conveys what makes the place so special and the work of the Trust in a cute, fun way. It worked well for newspapers – providing great images of the cake being cut and also made a great visual story for TV. The images can also be shared on your website and social media channels – where they will also have great impact.
The creativity involved in cake making can also reflect your brand values. These stunning cakes below reflect the creativity involved in locomotive engineering.
Baking is also high profile, thanks to the Great British Bake Off and its showstoppers.
Cakes help showcase your logo and product
This fabulous cake above was created to celebrate 40 years of the National Railway Museum in York. It features a replica of a Virgin Trains East Coast locomotive that was branded to celebrate the museum’s birthday. Cakes can easily be branded as part of the design, helping to get your business message out there. It’s much easier for the media to ask you to remove a banner with a logo on it as a backdrop than it is to remove it from a cake…. It provided fabulous publicity for both organisations.
Cakes are great for sharing
Creating a cake to celebrate an anniversary, birthday or other special event, is a great way to work in partnership with other local businesses. You might even persuade someone local to create a cake for free in return for the publicity it will generate. Cakes also taste great and are good for sharing. All these cakes were shared with volunteers who helped to be part of the anniversary events or exhibitions. It’s a great way to say thank you. The media are partial to cake too, so I think it helps encourage them to cover your event, whether or not they would admit that!
Here is some of the media coverage generated by these anniversary cakes:
https://www.minsterfm.com/news/local/1740067/videopictures-happy-birthday-nrm-from-virgin/
I’d love to see your sweet success and thoughts on how to generate media coverage for birthdays, anniversaries and product launches.
I am Emma Kate Farley, a freelance marketing, PR and communications consultant based in York. Find out more about me and how I can help raise the profile of your business here.
Emma Kate Farley Communications 