{"id":80,"date":"2011-12-15T03:40:34","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T03:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/ephemera\/?p=80"},"modified":"2020-11-11T12:58:26","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T01:58:26","slug":"the-cake-shop-flyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/the-cake-shop-flyer\/","title":{"rendered":"The cake shop flyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cake<\/a><\/p>\n

I think it was Bill Bryson or someone of that ilk who advised that one of the golden rules of travelling was never to eat at a restaurant where the menu comprised backlit photographs of the dishes on offer. It\u2019s a rule I\u2019ve broken many times, as anybody who has ever eaten in a food hall will appreciate, with mixed results along the way, some good, some bad.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m wondering though if the rule should be amended to include cake shops that advertise their wares by printing images of all their cakes. This flyer dropped out of the newspaper and immediately caught my eye, if perhaps not for the right reasons. OK, so I haven\u2019t eaten any of these cakes. I\u2019m sure they are delicious, light and fluffy, rich and sweet. But however good they may be in real life, the way they are presented here certainly does them no favours. The colours are drab and dull, the pictures lack any imagination or sense of style, the printing is flat and loose; there\u2019s even the odd typo or two thrown in for good measure. In short, the whole thing looks completely unappetising from a print perspective, which is not a good start when the purpose of it is to sell food.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why it caught my eye in the first place. We are so used to seeing fantastic direct mail pieces and catalogues that practically leap off the table with brilliant colours and dynamic design, great photography and amazingly vivid printing, so it comes as quite a shock to discover an item that fails on every level. I\u2019m puzzled why somebody \u2013 the designer, the printer, the ad rep \u2013 didn\u2019t stop the client at some point and say, \u2018Hey, you know, this could be so much better\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

Mind you, there could be more to this than meets the eye. I\u2019ve had this flyer on my desk for a while now and every so often I keep looking at it, trying to figure out what\u2019s wrong with it (Let me count the ways\u2026). It\u2019s safe to say that no other flyer has occupied my time and attention to the same degree in recent times. So maybe there\u2019s a devious reverse-psychology at work here, a deliberate \u2018it\u2019s so bad it\u2019s good\u2019 strategy that succeeds with failure. It\u2019s brilliant when you think about it.<\/p>\n

And, you know, I\u2019m tempted to order one of these cakes just to see if they are anything like the photograph, to compare the taste with the marketing. Surely the reality can\u2019t be as bad as the simulacrum (in contrast to most backlit menu meals where the reality often disappoints)? So let\u2019s see, what shall it be\u2026 lemon poppyseed or mango & passionfruit\u2026?<\/p>\n

\"shredded<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think it was Bill Bryson or someone of that ilk who advised that one of the golden rules of travelling was never to eat at a restaurant where the menu comprised backlit photographs of the dishes on offer. It\u2019s a rule I\u2019ve broken many times, as anybody who has ever eaten in a food […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":81,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flyers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1009,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/1009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deadreal.com.au\/dead_paper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}