In a 2022 interview, Meghan Markle said that she and her husband, Prince Harry, were like “salt and pepper” because they “always move together.”
Increasingly, however, that is no longer the case, with the couple appearing to make a conscious effort to split into two very separate brands.
However, the decision to split their identities risks diluting their impact and encouraging unfounded speculation that their relationship is strained, brand and marketing experts told the Daily Beast, ahead of the couple’s decision to appear in separate events on opposite sides of the country Wednesday.
ADVERTISEMENT
Harry is going to appear at the New York Times’ prestigious DealBook conference hosted by Andrew Ross Sorkin in New York while Meghan will attend a distinctly more lowbrow gala at which her friend Tyler Perry, who famously lent the couple a luxury house when they first moved to California despite never having even met Harry, is getting an award.
Representatives in the Sussex camp declined to comment on whether the couple’s plans for the day represented a broader strategic realignment.
However, it has been widely reported that the couple are splitting their professional lives, with Harry concentrating on more “serious” aspects of philanthropic life with his wife focusing on more celebrity-driven commercial opportunities.
Wednesday’s very different outings seem clear evidence of that intent.
Whether or not it will work is another question.
Paula Froelich, entertainment correspondent and senior story editor for US cable channel NewsNation, whose previous gigs include Page Six, Entertainment Tonight and The Insider told The Daily Beast: “The current reset is: Harry focuses on charity ad Meghan focuses on commercial projects. They are trying to show they are individual powerhouses. It’s working for Harry but not so much for Meghan. It’s going to be interesting to see how she handles being constantly upstaged by her husband.”
You can’t blame them for trying a reboot; the couple’s commercial projects, outside of those that have involved selling their own stories, whether undertaken separately or together, have had little success.
Their Archetypes podcast, fronted by Meghan, was cancelled, Harry’s Heart of Invictus documentary failed to make the Netflix top ten and Meghan’s animated show, Pearl, was cancelled before production started. Her jam and homeware brand, American Riviera Orchard, seems mired in bureaucratic and trademark difficulties.
Their latest outing on Netflix, a documentary about the easy-to-hate, elite sport of polo, has been widely ridiculed—but may of course yet prove the doubters wrong when it drops next week.
The show, Polo, has been criticized by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) who say the sport is cruel to horses. In 2010, a pony Harry was riding collapsed and died shortly after a polo match.
Meghan has previously set herself up as against all forms of animal cruelty, proudly showing off her “rescue hens” in interviews. The involvement of someone who clearly believes the factory farming of eggs constitutes animal cruelty is just one of the many baffling aspects of “Polo,” yet Meghan and Harry’s role as executive producers is flagged full screen in the opening credits of the trailer for the show that dropped recently.
Tony Case, a marketing expert and writer, told The Daily Beast that the overwhelmingly negative comments posted under the Polo trailer on YouTube are symptomatic of a broader problem—“The general apathy the public has for this pair”— adding: “This clearly is not a country that is rooting for Harry and Meghan.”
Warren Johnson, a veteran PR and marketing consultant who has worked with global consumer brands including Sony, Disney, Adidas, Tinder and Nobu, and is the eponymous boss of W Communications, told The Daily Beast: “I fear they may have drunk too much of their own Kool-Aid. 2+2=5 when it comes to creating celebrity couples from lesser individuals, and ‘Harry and Meghan’ is a classic example of that. Sadly, the maths the other way is less attractive; when the couple is divided by two you are left with an estranged royal and a jam making actress.”
Norah Lawlor, a New York based PR and image consultant, said: “The risk is that making L.A. engagements a ‘Meghan’ brand attribute and royal-type engagements a ‘Harry’ brand attribute will pull them further apart not just in terms of scheduling, but also in terms of mindset and goals.”
Crisis prevention expert Drew Kerr of The Four Corners Group told The Daily Beast: “One or two appearances apart is nothing. Adults are allowed to be independent in 2024. But if it is consistent, over a period of time, let’s say three or four weeks, with no explanation, then people might be entitled to speculate that something else is going on. ‘Bennifer’ is the cautionary example here.
“Contrary to popular belief, facts don’t speak for themselves. If they are not communicating about the joint brand and where they stand, the silence is doing the talking. That means they’ve ceded control of their story to the press and social media.”
Ultimately, together or apart, many believe the couple have fatally damaged their brand by making bank out of selling royal secrets. Without a meaningful reconciliation, the conflict with Harry’s family will always remain far more interesting than the latest impact report from Archewell highlighting all the good things they have done.
As Froelich says: “The only story the world wants to see from them now is if they ever got their head out of their asses, hired a non-sycophantic shrink who pointed out all the inconsistencies in their ‘truths’ and did what the rest of the world does on a regular basis: Make nice with their families, who may be imperfect, but love them.”
