don’t worry mum, it was just unfortunate placement! but no press is bad press right!?
so you know when you build up an idea in your head, and you map out exactly how it’s going to go every step of the way, and then you do it, and it just doesn’t go to plan at all? like you’ve got your favourite grandmas 90th, and you decide for some god unknown reason that you’re going to make her favourite dessert, a croquembouche (look it up and you’ll know what I mean).
you plan for weeks, watching step by step youtube videos on how to make this heavenly tower of cream puffs. you gather all of the necessary tools for success: a piping bag, latex gloves, a cone and a french language book – because seriously – what the hell is ‘choux’ and ‘crème légère’. they do not teach this stuff in schools.
you prep all your ingredients, measure everything out, have your stations set up and allow yourself double the recommended time. but somehow, despite all of your preparation, you end up two hours deep with little cream puffs all over the floor, sticky toffee between your gloves and skin, and more flour on the bench than the recipe even called for. the towering masterpiece of caramel-covered cream puffs surrounded by golden threads of sugar that you imagined drifting further and further away. you pull it together just enough that you have something to show for all your efforts, never mind it resembling a sponge more than a tower.
has this ever happened to you? i may have unlocked some deep seeded trauma with the story above, but really this is a metaphor for our latest and first(???) appearance in the media. a story by the advertiser, that whilst well intentioned, took a grave turn when someone decided that the best placement for an image of you and your brother gleefully throwing bottles of wine in the air was best placed next to the headline ‘child sex monsters rot in jail – repeat pedos to get life’. an innocent mistake, one can only assume.
the lesson: no matter how much thought you can put into your brand story, who you are, how you are depicted through your messaging and social media – or how many tutorials you watch and ‘choux’s’ you attempt, your croquembouche may not end up a towering masterpiece, and you may end up in the paper next to a very unfortunate headline. sometimes, all you can do is laugh.
