Taste Tests

I have that old Westlife (or is it Ronan Keating?) song going round in my head, the one that goes “You say it best when you say nothing at all”. It’s because I’ve just taken part in a vast taste test of festive cakes, bakes and pies.
You can probably guess where this is going: there were some delicious products and there were some real duds. And while it’s funny to think of new ways to criticise a cake – such as “this is a mean little pie”; “this yule log tastes of regret” – I had to stop myself from writing those thoughts down.

In the past when I was a restaurant reviewer, the occasional shoeing was part of the game – not least because the audience reads a review as much for the virtual experience as for the possibility of booking a real experience.

But posh Christmas cakes and supermarket mince pies are a different matter – it’s important to put snark to one side and focus on consumer advice – and it is far better to focus on the ones worth buying and why than the dry/burnt/anemic products we quietly pushed to one side.

So in PR terms, weird though it sounds, be grateful if one of your client’s products wasn’t included (most brands had one decent offering in their range): we might just have saved your blushes.