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Apple pie in a blog about public relations? Read this article and you won’t only bake the most delicious apple pie, it will also help you with the decisions about your pr-plan and the execution of it.

Imagine the next scenario: your mother is turning 75 in a month and there will be 100 guests. You would like to do something special so you decide to bake the most delicious apple pie, because your father used to do so when he was still alive. It has been a while, so you look up the recipe to see which ingredients you need (hint 1 why good PR is just like apple pie). You pick the ingredients with care (hint 2) and when possible: buy biologic products, you will taste the difference when you use good products. Beautiful ‘Goudrenetten’ or Jonagold, daity butter, raisins, currants, lemon, caster sugar, vanilla sugar, salt, cinnamon, self-rising flour and an egg.

Preparation (hint 3)

The dough

Cut the butter into cubes and let it reach room temperature. Grate half of the lemon.
Take a clean glass dish. Mix self-raising flour, salt, sugar and vanilla sugar.
Sprinkle the butter cubes with lemon zest.
Knead the butter through the dough mixture until it’s a homogeneous (nice smooth) mass.

The apples and the cake

Put the raisins in lukewarm water.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.
Grease the baking tray with butter, or use parchment paper and sprinkle with a very thin layer of flour.
Break the egg into a bowl and beat it with a fork until it’s a foamy substance.
Cover the baking sheet with the dough and make sure that the whole shape is covered, also the edges, the thickness should be about 1 centimeter.
Peel the apples, remove the core and cut the apple into slices (not too thin, 2 cm at the top).
Lightly press the apple slices with the thin layer into the dough. This can be done in carré or in half circles – whatever you prefer, for the taste it doesn’t matter.
Decorate with cinnamon powder and the rolled raisins.
Push the edges of the dough slightly up in order for the apple slices to be well covered with dough at the edges. You will get a thick, upright edge with crispy crust (yumm!).
Brush the dough borders with the beaten egg, which gives a nice golden brown color (hint 4)

Baking

Put the baking sheet in the oven and bake for 15 minutes.
Set the temperature to 175 degrees and bake for another 50 minutes.
Increase the temperature to 220 and bake the cake in about 15 minutes – this is different for each oven – so try it out first if you don’t know your oven very well (hint 5).

Serving

This depends on the atmosphere you would like to create, whether you serve the pie on a chic covered table as a dessert or if your guests get the pie with their coffee or tea while sitting at small tables (hint 6). You can put the pie on the baking plate while serving it on the bufet table to give your guests the opportunity to put their own slice of cake on their saucer. Another option is to pre-cut the cake and serve it on plauteaus on the covered tables.

Enjoy

Take the time to enjoy the apple pie together. Ask if you can have a little word and tell why you have chosen to serve this apple pie in this way, and why it’s so nice to celebrate this birthday together – you will make this apple pie part of a memorable moment (hint 7).

Thank

A week afther the party, send a little thank you to all the guests accompanied with pictures from the party and the apple pie of course. Refer to what has been said that night, how much fun it was and the plans of the cousins to organize a reunion (hint 8).

To the point – good PR is the same as good apple pie

You probably got the clue. What would happen when you would decide to use ‘Granny Smith” instead of ‘Goudrenetten’, semi-skimmed milk instead of full milk or decide to leave the egg. Oh, and let’s replace the dairy butter with margarine. And while we’re at it, we might as well not put apples in it – because it’s too expensive after all and all that peeling and cutting and decorating is taking way too much time. Or, also a classic case: you do everything according to the recipe but you’re not paying too much time and attention to the ‘getting together’. And when the moment is over, you don’t send the little thank you because you forgot to charge the phone and weren’t able to take pictures.

You might laugh about it, but unfortunately this happens way too often with PR plans. You develop a concept and plan (the recipe) together and everyone is happy. But then the execution (ingredients and production) starts and the trouble begins. No time, can’t it be a little cheaper, can we do this with less people etcetera. Yes that’s all possible, but what do you think the end result is going to look like?

People, PR is just like apple pie – once you start bargaining with the ingredients, the preparation, the production and/or the execution, don’t expect the pie to have a good taste, the party to be succesful and the end result to be fantastic.

Want to see examples of succesful apple pies? Click here and here.

Would you like to request a recipe or order an apple pie? Call Mabelle or Layana.

Social media, social influencers, fake news – as a pr-professional you can easily feel like an octopus juggling. But don’t panic – the essence of public relations has not changed. The means and ways to communicate with your audiences have expanded, sure – but it’s still about relationships between organizations and stakeholders.

1. Set the stage, give a great pass

So that your clients can take the stage, take the shot and get the credits they need. With public relations we aim to create the best circumstances possible in a certain situation. We investigate the playing field, seek out the most important audiences and give our client the tools to reach them. In other words: create the best circumstances for your client to score.

2. Focus on what you want to achieve, not on what you are afraid of

Energy flows where attention goes. If you want your client’s impact on – lets say – endorsers to grow, give those endorsers attention. What do they need, what problem can your client solve for them? How can your client reach out to them? Use what went wrong to improve the next time, but do not dwell on it. Think about the law of attraction: whatever we focus on we experience more of. (While writing this I realize I should follow my own advice more often.)

3. Think ahead

Public relations also should help paving the path for the results your client wants to accomplish. Search for the best path and remove the rocks that can derail your plans, or if you can’t remove them: map them. This may sound contrary to the previous, but it isn’t. We are very experienced in crisis-pr, but the best way to deal with a crisis is to avoid it. Because most crises are not like lightning, they are like a storm building up. Most of the time you can see them coming.

4. Media relations: focus on proof

A PR-professional is not always the most popular person in the (board) room. We are not there to say what people want to hear, but what they need to hear. We are wired to think ahead and we need to focus on paving the path. We can work with proof (actual results) and we can work with vision. Wishful thinking is good for crafting new strategies, but to put it ‘out there’ we need either results, or actions that support our client’s claim.

5. Have another cherry

With a great invention, or with proof that Bin Laden is not dead but lives in Zoetermeer, it’s easy for a pr-professional (well, for anyone frankly) to get media attention. Everything else feels a bit like writing a subsidy proposal or competing in a beauty contest: you have to tune in to the most popular topic of that moment and you need to be in all the right places to meet journalists, go to all the right parties to meet influencers and their societal entourage. For those kinds of cherries on your cake, give us a call. Because we can recommend some good pr-agencies.

For anything else: call us too. We won’t make a cat out of a dog, just because the journalist we know prefers cats. We’ll find someone who is interested in dogs instead. Just like many journalists like to keep their professional distance, we prefer that too.

PR MISUNDERSTANDINGS #6 – GOOD PR = APPLE PIE