A Yorkshire bakery has gone down a storm on social media after it politely declined a PR company’s request to pay for an unnamed celebrity’s birthday spread in exposure.
Three Little Birds Bakery shared an email exchange between the bakery and the PR company that represents the celebrity on July 27, along with the caption: “This poor celebrity apparently can’t afford to pay people for their products and services. Spare a thought! What happened to women supporting women.”
The request to the bakery read: “We are organising a 40th Birthday Party for a well-known celebrity on the 1st of September 2023 in Manchester. In return for being a supplier for the event, payment would be made in the form of promotion on their socials with over 700K followers, as well as promoted on OK Magazine. They will be crediting all the suppliers on these platforms. The party has a guest list full of celebrities and industry people from tv/film and music, so loads of work would come from it.”
The email went on to request two cakes and 100 cupcakes with the theme “camp as tits.”
In a brilliant response, also shared with followers, the bakery said: “I’m so sorry to hear that your client has fallen out on such hard times they can’t afford to pay small businesses for their products. Unfortunately, as my mortgage provider doesn’t take payment ‘in the form of promotion on their socials’, and my staff can’t feed their kids with exposure on Instagram, I’ll have to decline your very generous offer.”
The reaction from Three Little Birds’ 5.3k followers was pretty much universally supportive – one new fan of the bakery said: “Got yourself a new follower here, purely because this response is exactly the level of business like sarcasm I aspire to,” while another wag suggested that the celebrity in question might be “Beggy Mitchell.” It didn’t end there, however.
Yesterday, Three Little Birds took to Facebook once more to reveal that the PR company concerned had threatened legal action for “encouraging defamation of their business.”
The PRs seemed to attract little sympathy – one cheeky soul suggested: “Now all they have to do is find a legal team who are willing to take payment in the form of likes and shares,” while several others questioned how simply posting an email exchange could amount to defamation. It didn’t go unnoticed that the whole affair is quite bad PR.
Three Little Birds owner Rebecca Severs doesn’t seem to be taking the threats to heart too much – the social media posts are clocking up likes and she’s just been splashed across The Independent.
She took to Facebook – where else – to opine “talk about exposure…Reckon I owe The Indie at least 101 cupcakes now?!”
Three Little Birds is located in Keighley, West Yorkshire, where Severs finally opened a physical store two months ago after spending around seven years running her business from home.
