Former Coronation Street star Catherine Tyldesley has been hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons but it is easy to see why.
‘Cakegate’ has been met with a lot of angry reactions for very obvious reasons. As a former journalist of 15 years, I would have jumped all over this story – and I am not the only one.
If you have not heard what has happened here is a summary. The VIP party planner working for the famous actress who starred in one of the country’s biggest soaps has the cheek to ask for free birthday cake from a small, independent business – how can they even have the nerve to do this?
So yes, we all know that famous people get a lot of free stuff in return for sharing the business to their social media followers – that is not news. But for a company to ask a small business, during a cost-of-living crisis, for free cake for her 40th birthday (and it was not a small order) beggars belief.
The response from Three Birds Bakery saying they cannot pay their mortgage, bills and staff with social media coverage is just brilliant. Any journalist would be all over this as it is a case of the little man fighting back (so to speak).
It is hard to imagine anyone doing all of that work and not getting a paycheck at the end of it.
Now we can accept that maybe the Eva Price actress did not know what her party planner was up to, but very wrong if they were doing it behind her back like that. It was also said the company would not say who the star was they were working for – so how do we know now?
But what made the whole saga even more unbelievable and bizarre was the actress then filmed a video from her car saying she ‘had no idea those emails were being sent’. It appears she put absolutely no thought into what she was saying or sought advice before posting it.
She goes on to defend the company saying they have been “completely misrepresented in this matter”, despite the cake business owner sharing emails they say are from the company.
She ended it saying “I don’t really know what to say. I mean, I hope the cake lady got the exposure she was craving whilst I’ve got journalists knocking on the front door while my kids are playing in the front room, dead nice that babes”. Ouch.
The previously unproblematic actress who had built up a good reputation now looks heartless, unrepentant and unsupportive of small businesses. That is a lot to achieve with one social media post.
She played right into the hands of the press and of course they are going to jump all over this. It has got everyone talking about celebrity culture and expectation at a time when a lot of people are struggling to simply put food on the table.
It evokes anger that someone who is so well off has the nerve to ask for free stuff that they can blatantly afford – she has hired a party planner for her birthday party after all. Her name will forever be associated with it. Every news article will link back to it – for the time being at least.
This is where she should have sought crisis management from her PR company before responding to any of the accusations. Any decent PR company would have told her to never hit out at a small business that is trying to survive the current economic crisis, particularly has they appeared to have hard evidence that a company she hired was in the wrong.
Up until the point she spoke out, she had some deniability as no one said she was asking for free things. She could have said she was looking into what happened or made a gesture of goodwill to the cake company.
A video being flippant over the whole saga was never go down well – unless you are a reporter of course. So if there is one thing to take away from this it is the age old saying – think before you speak.
Get advice from those who know the industry. This is something we know all too well at Penguin PR as we are all former journalists so we know how they think.
This can be brilliant when it comes to getting your news out there but also for when things go wrong. The last thing you want to do is escalate the situation but keeping quiet is also not going to do you any favours either.
A well thought out response can make all the difference. It is a case of thinking it through and talking to others – a knee-jerk reaction is only going to lead to more problems at the end of the day and many more follow-up stories from anyone who has an opinion on the matter.
