Everything I Know About Marketing, I Learned From Cake Decorating

Taking a cake decorating class is something I’ve wanted to do since college, but just recently made the time to do. As I decorated my final cake and finished my second class, I discovered there are many parallels between cake decorating and marketing. I am willing to bet that if you look close enough, these same parallels apply to almost any job that requires both precision and creativity.

Making frosting is a necessary evil.

I LOVE making pretty flowers, fancy borders and fun characters. I HATE making the frosting. Sifting the sugar, measuring out the ingredients, mixing – BORING! But, it’s also the single most important thing you do when decorating a cake. It’s a process that has to be exact – add just one extra teaspoon of water and the frosting is useless.

How much of marketing is like this? Conducting research, planning, and creating all of the backup materials and documentation isn’t always the most glorious part of a project. They don’t look beautiful or generate praise in the hallways, but without these steps, the project won’t accomplish the purpose it was designed to accomplish. It will eventually take up residence in the trash can.

A flower is rarely perfect on the first try.

As I learned how to make each flower, I discovered my own ways of perfecting the technique. It took a little time and massaging to get it right, but eventually I found the best way to achieve the result I wanted.

Like cake decorating, marketing lives somewhere between science and art. While experience has taught us the basic concepts and techniques, each project takes a bit of massaging along the way to get it just right. That’s what I love about it. If I had wanted something more concrete, I would have been a mathematician.

Just because it’s pretty doesn’t mean it tastes good.

Fondant, the kind of frosting that is completely smooth and is laid on a cake rather than spread, is a decorators dream. It makes a cake look beautiful and sophisticated at once. The problem with fondant is that most of the time it tastes awful. While fondant is prettier, I’ll choose a cake with butter cream frosting almost every time.

Likewise, some of our most creative work doesn’t accomplish what we think it will. It can be difficult to acknowledge the more attractive work isn’t accomplishing its purpose and to move on to something else, but you have to decide whether you want to create campaigns that work or campaigns that simply look pretty.

A little praise goes a long way.

Last class, my instructor complimented me on one of my flower techniques. I felt like the best cake decorating student in the entire world and decided to take the next class from this instructor.

Make people feel good about themselves and they are 100 times more likely to do what you ask them. That goes for both the people you supervise and the people you are trying to sell your product or service.

As Julia Child would say, “Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.”

What are you passionate about in your spare time? Have you found any parallels that have helped you at work? Share below.