If we’d ask you about this man before 15th April 2013 it’s likely, unless you were his close family, co-worker or lived in the vicinity of Sawston, Cambridgeshire in the UK, you’d never heard of Chris Holmes, aka. Mr Cake. But a week is a long time on the web and in that time Mr Cake has gone viral.
The tale is that Chris Holmes, a Border Force immigration officer at Stansted Airport, announces his resignation via the tasty medium of a passion cake topped with iced resignation letter. The story is picked up by Reddit (shouldn’t that be Eatit?) and is soon rising. Shortly after, it goes viral. And one day later the picture of the cake has been viewed over one million times.
A sweet Master class from a Master Chef of social media marketing perhaps? Apparently not, just a tweet of the original picture from his brother in law to the world, and off it took.
What’s the social media take on it?
A quick glance on Twitter (#MrCake) reveals ‘Resigning by Cake is the future!’; ‘If you’re going to publicly resign, you should always do it with a cake’, ‘Sweet way to quit bro!’; ‘Wishing you much success’ and even the celebrity chef himself Anthony Worrall Thompson tweets ‘Great resignation letter written by a customs official, Chris Holmes on the icing of a carrot cake #mrcake.co.uk, good letter great cake’.
Talking of the response Chris Holmes tweeted:
Incredible! I put the photo on my personal FB page and somehow it went viral. I’m overwhelmed by the positive response!!’
Surely Mr Cake’s business has risen and is well and truly baked? Certainly the stats to his site look impressive. WebsiteStatsChecker sees his new business mrcake.co.uk (25th April) receiving 5,123 unique daily visitors and 25,615 daily pageviews – those of us in online business would all appreciate some webstats like that, we suspect.
A Good news ‘viral’ story?
On the face of it though, why should this go viral?
- Millions of people resign every day, nothing out of the ordinary with that.
- Many people resign to devote more ‘time and energy’ to their family and an emerging own business. Don’t think politician, this guy has no scandal to add into the mix!
So what is its great appeal?
- Maybe the feel good factor had something to do with it. The letter is well written and unlike many resignation letter stories, is not one of vitriol, Chris going so far as to wish ‘the organisation and my colleagues the best for the future’.
- The creativity and visual impact make it eminently tweetable and social media friendly.
- The approach certainly has novelty value; often a success factor.
All of these contributed but a key reason this story connected with so many people around the world was surely the underlying message at the heart of it.
The 3 P’s behind Mr Cake’s viral phenomena
We think Chris Holmes, inadvertently perhaps, tapped into the zeitgeist of all those people spending their lives doing jobs, even very good jobs, that they might rather not be doing. In a few short beautifully crafted and imaginatively presented sentences, he articulated the 3 ‘Ps’ that many of us would like to live by – priority, purpose and passion.
His cake eloquently showed his:
- Priority – ‘Having recently become a father I now realise how precious life is and how important it is to spend my time doing something that makes me, and other people, happy’.
- Purpose – ‘For that reason, I hereby give notice of my resignation, in order that I may devote my time and energy to my family and my cake business.’
- Passion – He chose a passion cake, he says, because ‘it was quite an appropriate choice, given I was following my passion. If it all goes to plan, Ben is to thank for giving me that kick to get on and do something I have a passion for.’ (The Guardian 16th April 2013)
Brilliant Living
So the real reason behind the popularity of Chris Holmes’ cake story is that he has done what many would like to do and changed his life to live his version of brilliant living. And whether we choose to do the same or not, his story resonates with us; we admire him for it and can be inspired by his example. So thank you Mr Cake and we wish you all the best for your venture at www.mrcake.co.uk
What are your 3 P’s?
What are the priorities, purpose and passion that you want to devote your time and energy to? Do you know? We’d love to hear about it in the comments below.
That would really be the icing on our cake!