Prince William faces struggle to reinvent monarchy, say royal experts
The Guardian
Prince William faces a struggle to reinvent the monarchy as a progressive force, royal experts have warned, after he made it clear there would be a change of strategy following his controversial trip to the Caribbean.
The future king has said he intends to break with tradition in his reign and become a “unifying force”, with a slimmed-down royal household and a more “reactionary and agile” approach to communications that would depart from the “never complain, never explain” policy adopted by his predecessors, according to reports in the Daily Mail.
But royal experts said it had been several decades since “never explain, never complain” was palace policy, and the prince would have to do more to keep the monarchy relevant for younger generations.
William’s comments came after the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s tour of the Caribbean, in which they encountered the strength of republican sentiment in Jamaica and the Bahamas, where the Queen remains head of state, and took part in photo opportunities that have been criticised as throwbacks to colonialism.
One source quoted in the Mail said that William had privately expressed concern about how the Land Rover moment would be received several weeks before the tour.
William issued a statement after the trip – understood to have not been discussed with the Queen and Prince Charles first – in which he said the visit “had brought into even sharper focus questions about the past and the future”.
One former palace public relations source said this was unsurprising as William was more flexible over his future role as king than many understood. “There’s a feeling in the institution that over time the monarchy can update itself and change, but it has to be gradual, subtle and carefully thought through,” he said.
It was a particularly thorny issue at the moment, he said, as the role of the monarchy was to act as a “unifying presence” outside party politics, focusing on important social issues everyone could agree on, which is difficult in an “increasingly disunited society”. One of these issues was likely to include how to improve the diversity of palace staff, especially in senior positions, to ensure it better reflects the national make-up.
Philip Murphy, a professor at the University of London and former director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, said William’s comments reflect how the palace is “involved in a constant learning process” that balances tradition with public opinion. “Sometimes it has to ditch the standard way of doing things and reinvent the process, and that’s what we’re seeing here.”
Murphy thought the problems in the Caribbean had likely arisen because the region was a “constitutional grey zone”. William had to juggle the expectation that, as someone in line to be head of state, he would “acknowledge the very deep sense of grievance” with an understanding that it would be “constitutionally improper” to broach matters for the UK government such as “the sensitive issues of colonialism or slavery”.
However, he suggested that William could have been “more flexible and imaginative” in Jamaica. “I think the British government in particular have got to rethink the whole nature of royal tours,” Murphy said. “They create a disconnect between some of the coverage in the rightwing tabloids in Britain and the way these issues are covered and commented on in the international media and in Commonwealth countries themselves.”
William is understood to have also raised questions about whether it would be appropriate for him to be head of the Commonwealth, since the role is not hereditary. In 2018, Commonwealth leaders formally announced that Charles would become the next head after the Queen.
Mark Borkowski, a PR agent who is a longstanding observer of the royal family, suggested William might also overhaul the honours system to strip its connection with the legacy of empire.
The focus on his vision raises questions over whether Charles’s reign would be “some interim organisation until William takes over”, he said. “That’s where real change will happen, because we’ve got generations of young Britons who don’t have any empathy with the boomer vision of the world.”
Borkowski believes William is thinking imaginatively about his future reign in a changing society, much as his grandmother did when she became Queen as a young woman and developed an image of “what post-empire Britain looked like”.
“We’ve had a long serving monarch with a throwback to the last days of empire. Her son and grandson are so far away from that,” he said.
The new Posh and Becks? Meet Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz
Sunday Times
It was, depending on your point of view, either the celebrity wedding of the century or the nadir of vacuous pop culture. When David Beckham and Victoria Adams got married in 1999, they sat on gold thrones, released a dove after exchanging their vows, cut the many-tiered cake with a sword and wore matching purple outfits for the reception. In a record-breaking £1 million deal, OK! Magazine covered the occasion and a national obsession with Golden Balls and Posh Spice’s relationship was cemented.
Now another Beckham wedding extravaganza is imminent. Brooklyn Beckham, who also wore head-to-toe purple as a baby on his parents’ big day, is marrying Nicola Peltz, an American trustafarian actress, and Vogue has secured exclusivity rights.
The main event is scheduled for Saturday, April 9 at the bride’s family’s oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. Known as Montsorrel, this is the £76 million estate where Nicola’s father, a hedge fund titan named Nelson Peltz, hosted a £400,000-per-couple re-election fundraiser for Donald Trump in February 2020. Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s country club, is just up the beach but the 45th president is unlikely to be on the guest list — Nelson Peltz publicly stopped supporting him after the Capitol riot in January 2021. Montsorrel isn’t as spacious as Peltz’s property in rural New York, which is set over 130 acres with albino peacocks roaming the grounds, a helipad and a full-sized ice rink, but blue skies are more dependable in the Sunshine State. They will have to make do with a mere seven acres (and 185m of private beach).
It will be a Jewish ceremony with Brooklyn, model, photographer and latterly aspiring celebrity chef, wearing a yarmulke for the service. Sources have yet to confirm if it will be purple. The 23-year-old groom has banned square plates (too naff) and reportedly teed up his father to be master of ceremonies. His younger brothers, Romeo, 19, and Cruz, 17, will act as best men.
Crockery details aside, the marriage marks a transatlantic merging of two mega-dynasties. “This is the Hollywood version of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry,” says R Couri Hay, a New York society publicist who has crossed paths with the Peltz family. “You’ve got the son of sports and fashion royalty marrying an American billionaire’s daughter, who also happens to be a beautiful actress.”
While the family fortunes differ in scale — David and Victoria’s net worth is a mere £380 million, as calculated by The Sunday Times Rich List, while Forbes puts Nelson Peltz’s net worth at £1.3 billion — Brooklyn can relate to Nicola’s silver-spoon upbringing of private jets, security guards and non-disclosure agreements. “I think Nelson is happy Nicola didn’t marry a fortune hunter or a young playboy who counted on his parents to pay all his bills or who was some out-of-control nightclub kid,” Hay says.
Brooklyn has enjoyed a few paydays to cover at least some of his own bills; in 2016 he landed a £100,000 advertising deal with Huawei to plug a smartphone and later modelled for the clothing company Pull&Bear, with the profoundly meaningless campaign slogan “Jump barriers and be in the right place”. Last year he received £1 million to be the face of the fashion brand Superdry.
After a first encounter at the Coachella music festival in California, Nicola and Brooklyn met again at a party in October 2019 and began dating. The following summer he got down on bended knee with a £350,000 diamond ring. It’s not clear who stumped up for that one. Tactfully, Nicola, 27, wore a dress designed by Victoria Beckham for the engagement photos, although she is believed to have picked a Valentino gown for the wedding and has jetted to Rome for wardrobe fittings. Brooklyn has demonstrated his dedication by getting tattoos of — deep breath — Nicola’s name, Nicola’s granny’s name (Gina), Nicola’s eyes, Nicola’s mum’s rosary beads (she’s Catholic), a replicated love letter from Nicola (signed “your future wifey”) and so on. She has a small, cursive “Brooklyn” inked on her back.
The bride-to-be grew up in Westchester County, an affluent area outside New York City, with her thrice-married father, her mother — a former model called Claudia Heffner Peltz — and seven siblings (there are also two half-siblings from Nelson’s first marriage). Plus the peacocks.
Nicola, the youngest daughter, is close to her Jewish Brooklyn-born father, who was a self-described “ski bum” and university dropout before he turned his family’s frozen food distribution business into a $150 million public company in the 1970s. Today, the 79-year-old mogul still runs his investment fund, Trian Partners. He has worked with America’s best-known companies — Procter & Gamble, Tiffany & Co, Starbucks, Heinz — and recently bought up a chunk of Unilever, the struggling British consumer goods giant. Described by his future son-in-law as “the most loveliest man”, Peltz is as powerful as he is private. “He has always been a behind the privet hedge sort of man, who wants to keep his money private, his family private,” Hay says.
On the other side of the aisle, the Beckhams have taken a different approach — they haven’t been out of the papers for a quarter of a century; Brooklyn’s birth was front-page news. When Posh and Becks, then 25 and 24 respectively, wed at Luttrellstown Castle, near Dublin, they were already world famous as a pouting pop star in the Spice Girls and an England footballer with a golden right foot. On the eve of his own nuptials, Brooklyn’s career is less established.
“Financially, I suspect he will always be all right,” says the celebrity PR consultant Mark Borkowski, acknowledging Brooklyn’s 13 million Instagram followers and the lucrative influencer world of so-called brand ambassadors. “But fulfilment and actually having something that he owns, that he’s brilliant at, there’s no evidence he can achieve that.”
His childhood was spent variously living in Britain, Spain and Los Angeles, while his dad played for Manchester United, Real Madrid and LA Galaxy, but Brooklyn ditched his own footballing dream after Arsenal’s youth academy released him aged 16. In a 2015 interview with ABC News, David reflected on how difficult his son found following in his footsteps: “He said, ‘Every time I step on to the field, I know people are saying, ‘This is David Beckham’s son,’ and if I am not as good as you, then it is not good enough.’ ”
Carving a different path has proved a struggle too. As a budding photographer he was hired by Burberry in 2016 to shoot a campaign, drawing criticism from professionals in the industry. A year later his £16.99 photography book, What I See, was roundly panned. One image of an elephant entirely in the shade was captioned: “So hard to photograph but incredible to see”. Next to a blurry restaurant scene he wrote: “I like this picture — it’s out of focus but you can tell there’s a lot going on.”
He enrolled in a photography course at New York’s Parsons School of Design but dropped out a year later, allegedly due to homesickness. The celebrity photographer Rankin then gave him an internship but colleagues remarked that he was “lacking basic skills”.
Today Brooklyn lives in a £7.5 million mansion in Beverly Hills with Nicola and has a new goal — to become a celebrity chef. Encouraged by his (lactose intolerant) fiancée, he recently launched a show, Cookin’ with Brooklyn, which streams on Facebook and Instagram. The culinary pretensions kicked in during lockdowns but unfortunately he appears a few sandwiches short of a picnic on the cooking front. “I love cheese,” he says during a pasta-making tutorial. “It’s like butter.”
Victoria Beckham, who runs a fashion and beauty empire with a financial track record to horrify Nelson Peltz (her business has made losses upwards of £50 million and not recorded a profit since 2016), has probably not enjoyed much of Brooklyn’s food as she has eaten the same meal for 25 years. “Since I met her she only eats grilled fish, steamed vegetables — she will very rarely deviate from that,” David Beckham revealed on the River Café’s Table 4 podcast last month.
Cue derision when it was reported that one eight-minute episode of Cookin’ with Brooklyn cost $100,000 to make and involved a 62-person team. As he oversees a chef making a fish sandwich on the show, Brooklyn proffers his own technique (“I eat half the fish and then I, like, mess it all up and put it in two loaves of bread with the fish, vinegar, salt, mushy peas”). “[Brooklyn] is to cooking what Posh was to singing,” a source close to the production told the New York Post, adding that he needed an illustrated “cheat sheet” for basic terminology such as “whisk” and “parboil”.
“The question is whether the Beckham name is ultimately going to be a curse,” Borkowski says. “You’re never allowed the freedom to fail because as soon as you fail, you’re clickbait. Most people need failure, you learn more lessons from failure than you ever do from success. For Brooklyn, that’s a poisoned chalice.”
Thayer Willis, a US-based wealth therapist who helps the super-rich find fulfilment, agrees that the fear of failure can be crippling. “Sometimes young family members feel very defensive about being recognised as their parents’ child, more so than anything else,” she says. “They see the differential treatment they get because of their parents and that’s kind of demeaning.”
Escaping the long shadow of successful, famous parents to find identity, self-worth and purpose in early adulthood is a fraught business, while sympathy is understandably limited. On TikTok, skewering the lifestyles of so-called “#nepobabies” (nepotism babies) — high-profile celebrity kids such as the model Iris Law, the daughter of Jude Law and Sadie Frost, and the model and actress Lily-Rose Depp, the daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis — is a flourishing trend.
Willis argues that it’s crucial for colossally rich parents not to give their children too much too soon: “It helps these young family members take charge of their lives and realise, ‘Oh, it’s on my shoulders. If I want to have all the things I like in life, then I need to generate income.’ ”
As the heirs to Britain’s biggest celebrity brand, the trio of Beckham boys — all impeccably polite, I’ve heard — have the industry connections and social media pulling power to earn enviable incomes. (Their younger sister, Harper, is ten, at a private day school in London and not yet on social media.)
Having left Millfield School, the Somerset public school where boarding fees are £13,785 a term, Romeo recently made his playing debut for Fort Lauderdale CF, the reserve team of Inter Miami, the Florida club that his father co-owns. (Phil Neville, Beckham’s old Manchester United team-mate, is the manager and his 19-year-old son, Harvey, is also on the squad.) While Kieran Gibbs, the former Arsenal defender who now plays alongside Romeo in Florida, describes him as “a great, humble kid”, it is also assumed that the teenager wouldn’t have made it in the Premier League and made the right decision to leave Arsenal’s academy in 2015.
Realistically, Romeo is more likely to find success as a model and influencer. At the age of 12 he began to appear in high-profile Burberry campaigns. Last year he modelled for Yves Saint Laurent and recently accompanied his mum to Paris Fashion Week. He and his girlfriend Mia Regan, a model from Chippenham, are Generation Z idols and he regularly posts loved-up selfies on Instagram for his three million followers. Earlier this month the couple were revealed as the new faces of Ami, a trendy French fashion company, for its gender-neutral collaboration with Puma.
Then there is Cruz, son number three, who is attempting to break into the music industry and has worked with Poo Bear, the songwriter and mastermind behind Justin Bieber. Unsurprisingly, his image has toughened up since he released a Christmas charity single aged 11; a recent cover shoot for i-D magazine saw him topless, with jeans round his ankles, a pink buzz cut and metal grills on his teeth. “I don’t think you ever stop learning, but I’m taking my time seeing what happens,” he said, as critics griped that the edgy photoshoot was overly sexualised.
Meanwhile, Nelson Peltz’s ten children have pursued careers in finance, figure skating, ice hockey and acting. Nicola’s latest projects include writing and co-directing an upcoming film, Lola James, in which she stars alongside her brother Will. She has also been cast for an American TV series as Dorothy Stratten, the real-life Playboy model who was murdered by her estranged husband, who will be played by the Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens.
With limitless opportunities and limitless funds, Nicola and Brooklyn will surely have a prenuptial agreement. “In cases like this it’s interesting how involved the family, particularly the parents, get in negotiating the prenuptial agreement,” says Laura Wasser, a Hollywood divorce lawyer who has worked with Kim Kardashian, Johnny Depp and Britney Spears. “How in bed are the family going to be, so to speak, with these parties as they negotiate what should be a pretty important part of what they’re going into in terms of their marriage?”
Wasser, who charges clients $950 (£690) an hour plus a retainer, advises to have the prenup ironed out well before the wedding itself. “Then it’s done and any kind of conflicted or hurt feelings go away and you put on your beautiful dress, your tuxedo and you’ve got the bouquet, cake, music and a magical day.” In Hollywood, romance isn’t dead. It’s just reading the contracts.
In a YouTube video in which Brooklyn makes his fiancée a heart-shaped pizza and chocolate lava cake for Valentine’s Day, Nicola confesses that they are fretting about something less thorny than ring-fencing trust funds: the separate girls’ and boys’ “slumber parties” the night before the wedding. “We’ve been panicking about it, this one night apart,” says the bride-to-be. Then she tries a tiny spoonful of dessert and says: “Oh my God, that is amazing.”
Rivard: Billion-dollar tennis star
Among the many headliners in the mix at the first of the two spring events on US soil was Emma Raducanu.
Not for long, but still.
Is she worth a billion dollars like former Romanian pro and businessman Ion Tiriac said, piggybacking on a tweet by British PR guru Mark Borkowski claiming she was the billion-dollar girl after her big win in NYC, or just a one-hit wonder?Or does her path lie somewhere in between?
Considering current circumstances and her undeniable talent, let’s say she’s in between. A gifted athlete who perhaps experienced too much, too fast.
She’s not alone. There are countless young athletes just like her who were prematurely labelled as the next big thing.
In California, Emma battled through her first clash and then lost in the next round to Petra Martic of Croatia. Serving for the match at 5-4, Raducanu lost the next three games and the set and was promptly sent packing.
There haven’t been any other miracles since her unexpected US Open triumph. Her questionable decision to split from her coach, a bout of COVID-19 and an injury definitely slowed the momentum, and those things are all part of the equation.
There’s also the reality that awaits any prodigy who suddenly emerges.
After winning 10 straight matches without dropping a single set at her very first Slam, things suddenly got real. The result? A 4–7 record.
Of the seven losses, only one was against a high-ranking player: No.13 Elena Rybakina. The average ranking of Raducanu’s other opponents was no.87. Her four wins were over players around no.90.
Nothing to write home about, as the saying goes.
The euphoria is gone but the money that rained down from a myriad of sponsors charmed by her athletic and advertising potential has not.
“Still trying to figure everything out, and everything is still very new and it’s going to take a while to really settle into it,” Emma recently said.
That reminds me of something the Québec government repeated at the start of the pandemic about building the airplane while flying the first wave.
In Romanian newspaper Pro Sport, Ion Tiriac openly criticized Raducanu for firing coach Andrew Richardson, who helped her find her way to her first major: “Why did she get rid of the coach who took her there?!”
https://www.tenniscanada.com/news/rivard-billion-dollar-tennis-star/
Ukraine-Russia conflict: Putin takes revenge on West
Daily Express
The Russian President warned of rocketing costs if economic pressure intensifies on his country as UK experts claimed inflation here could hit 9.5 percent. Boris Johnson last night admitted Putin’s war will inflict further cost of living pain on Britons, adding: “It may be a bumpy period, but we’ll get through it as fast and as well as we possibly can.”
The Prime Minister pledged to ease the burden on consumers – and to ditch Russian oil and gas.
Responding to a question by Sky’s Beth Rigby over household energy bills soaring to potentially £3,000 a year, he said: “Now is the time to unleash an extraordinary programme of energy independence through massive investment in renewables, in more nuclear, a lot more nuclear, and also in sensible use of our own hydrocarbons, with our own oil and gas and without busting our carbon budget.”
Putin vowed to send world food prices soaring if Western countries tighten economic curbs.
In a Kremlin address he said: “Russia and [its ally] Belarus are some of the biggest suppliers of mineral fertilisers. If [Western countries] continue to create problems for the financing and logistics of the delivery of our goods, then prices will rise and this will affect the final product, food products.”
Russia last night banned exports of 200 types of goods including telecoms, medical items and timber plus motor, agricultural and electrical gear until the end of this year.
Further measures may stop foreign ships docking. The economy ministry said: “These measures are a logical response to those imposed on Russia”, adding that curbs on countries that have “committed unfriendly actions” were “aimed at ensuring uninterrupted functioning of key sectors of the economy”.
Premier Mikhail Mishustin made clear the ban includes exports of goods made by foreign firms operating in Russia such as cars, railway carriages and containers.
While former president Dmitry Medvedev warned assets owned by Western companies may be nationalised if they pull out of Russia. Firms including Caterpillar, Rio Tinto, Starbucks, Sony, Unilever and Goldman Sachs have all quit.
He said: “The Russian government is already working on measures, which include bankruptcy and nationalisation. Foreign companies should understand that returning to our market will be difficult.”
Russia is the UK’s 19th largest trading partner, with deals totalling £15.9billion over a year. The Kremlin is halting exports of wheat, rye, barley and corn to post-Soviet-countries in the Eurasian Economic Union until August 31 to ensure it has enough food at home.
Putin’s revenge is likely to further squeeze UK families with inflation tipped to top 9.5 percent, Goldman Sachs bankers warned.
Dan Crossley, executive director of the Food Ethics Council charity, said: “The spiralling cost of food was already a challenge in the UK and across Europe but is now being pushed even higher. Governments need to consider what measures they can take to ensure price inflation doesn’t put good food beyond the reach of even more people.”
The Bank of England had said that inflation would peak at seven percent next month but most economists revised up their predictions following the invasion.
Inflation hit a 30-year high of 5.5 percent in January, with steep rises expected soon. This “will exacerbate the cost-of-living crisis by reducing households’ real incomes”, said Paul Dales, UK economist at Capital Economics.
Millions are being battered by soarinig energy bills and by rising fuel prices. Mr Johnson said: “We will do everything we can to help households…particularly elderly vulnerable people. So the best thing for dealing with the cost of living, I mean big picture, is to have a strong economy, good high-wage, high-skilled jobs.”
He toured a Merseyside shipyard with Defence Secretary Ben Wallace yesterday.
The Federation of Wholesale Distributors said that dearer fuel will raise the price of groceries and restaurant food as its members pass on transport costs.
Food producers face surging prices for fertiliser, animal feed and for carbon dioxide used in packaging and livestock slaughter.
Ukrainian farmers – the world’s top producers of wheat, maize, barley and cooking oils – have stopped work to fight off Russian invaders.
Britain’s National Pig Association urged shops to pay more for pork to save the industry after feed costs soared.
Wheat rose to £300 a ton from £215 in a few days. Rob Mutimer, the body’s chairman, said: “We are staring down the barrel of a total collapse of the British pig industry.
“Retailers will not be able to rely on EU pork either as it gets shorter in supply and more expensive. They need to act now.”
Mark Spencer, Leader of the Commons, said that there was “no prospect of food shortages” and Environment Secretary George Eustice said the UK is “largely self-sufficient” in wheat.
Sandra Horsfield, economist at banking group Investec, said: “The longer the war lasts and the bigger the sanctions on Russia are, the greater the hit to UK activity.”
Oil prices by more than five percent yesterday.
This followed a 17 percent drop on Wednesday after confusion over whether major producers would help to plug the gap left by a ban on oil supplies from Russia.
The United Arab Emirates had appeared to push members of the Opec producer group to raise output, only for its energy minister to quash hopes. The UAE and neighbouring Saudi Arabia are among the few nations in Opec with spare capacity that could increase output and potentially offset supply losses.
The UAE’s US ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba said: “We favour production increases.”
Shock after diesel tops £2 a litre:
MOTORISTS on the Isle of Wight are paying a staggering £2 a litre for diesel – believed to be the most expensive in the UK, writes Steph Spyro.
Drivers at Osborne Garage in East Cowes felt a pinch at the pumps yesterday when diesel reached 201.5p. This is 10p more expensive than the previous day. Further pump price rises are likely in coming days as a result of crude oil hitting $139 a barrel earlier this week – the highest it has been in 14 years.
But the price plummeted to $109 on Wednesday.
Simon Williams, RAC fuel spokesman, said: “There was a hint of better news on Wednesday. But drivers will continue to see high prices on forecourts as retailers pass on their increased wholesale costs.”
Petrol was an average of 159.6p per litre on Wednesday, up 3.2p since Monday, data firm Experian Catalist said. Diesel averaged 167.4p – up 5.1p.
Bills hurdle too high for 1 in 4 OAPs:
ONE in four pensioners will struggle with soaring energy bills when prices rise next month, campaigners warn, writes Sarah O’Grady.
A quarter of older people in England will be living in fuel stress – spending more than 10 percent of their after-tax income on heating – up from 12 percent.
Age UK says that figure is due to go up to 35 percent after the second scheduled price rise in October. Some 51 percent of the poorest 10 percent of OAP households are already in fuel stress. That is expected to soar to 91 percent in April if no intervention comes.
Age UK Director Caroline Abrahams said: “The support package offered by the Chancellor last month falls several hundred pounds a year short of the bill rises. How is an older person on a low fixed income supposed to make up the difference?”
Jan Shortt, General Secretary of the National Pensioners’ Convention said: “The Chancellor must do more to alleviate rising fuel costs for our oldest and most vulnerable. His measures to date are far from enough.”
Cadbury owner faces customer backlash as it fails to join Jamie Oliver and Yorkshire tea in quitting Putin’s Russia:
CADBURY owner Mondelez has come under fire for failing to halt all operations in Russia, writes Steph Spyro.
The US confectionery giant has “scaled back all non-essential activities” and will instead focus on “basic offerings”.
David Fraser, of public relations firm Ready10, said: “It remains to be seen which firms are pulling out of Russia in a half-hearted way. But one thing is for sure – if they are, consumers will see through it pretty quickly and in some cases, vote with their feet.”
Mondelez boss Dirk Van de Put said the firm “condemns this unjust aggression”. He said it will cut operations “while helping maintain continuity of the food supply in the challenging times ahead”.
Mr Van de Put added: “We recognise this is a highly dynamic and very concerning situation that we will continue to assess and adjust as needed.
This follows rivals Procter & Gamble and Unilever halting investment.
Packaged food giant Nestle, cigarette company Philip Morris and Sony said pledge to cut operations and stop investment. But they would continue to provide essentials.
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: “Companies like Mondelez, Kraft, and Unilever wield the power to decide how disruptive Western sanctions will be on the everyday lives of Russians, and therefore how quickly this war might end.”
Yorkshire Tea has suspended trade, while celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is pulling the plug on a franchise restaurant in Moscow.
Goldman Sachs said it plans to close its operations in Russia – the first big Wall Street bank to quit.
Comment by Matt Williams, Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit
THE invasion of Ukraine has focused minds on ending the UK’s reliance on Russian oil and gas. Now President Putin is turning fertiliser into his newest geopolitical weapon threatening the West with soaring food costs.
Around 10 percent of the UK’s fertiliser imports came from Russia in 2020, and it is one of the world’s largest exporters. Methane is an ingredient of many fertilisers, meaning that as gas prices have rocketed, so have fertiliser prices.
Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit:
This newest threat shows the risks of a food system reliant on fossil fuels and fertilisers from unstable countries.
Fertiliser prices reached eye-watering levels in 2021 and have already climbed close to £1,000 per tonne in recent days. They could go higher still if Putin acts on this threat.
It’s time to look again at our food system, and what it costs farmers, families, and the climate. Innovative British companies, like CCm Technologies in Swindon, are doing just that.
Their low-carbon fertilisers use captured carbon dioxide and wastes to cut emissions by up to 90 percent compared to conventional methods. If this could be scaled up it could make a big difference for cutting the climate impact of food production.
Meanwhile, some farmers are reducing their use of these chemicals, replacing them with low-carbon, natural soil management.
As if these challenges weren’t enough for the farmers who feed the nation, another dark cloud is hanging overhead.
Extreme weather affected wheat and orchard fruit production in the UK last year, and flooding in western Europe damaged potato crops.
TV bosses queue in hope to land Oti Mabuse after she quit Strictly Come Dancing
The Mirror
Oti Mabuse is said to have been inundated with offers, led by ITV and Channel 4. The pro dancer announced her departure from Strictly Come Dancing after seven years this week
She is said to have been inundated with offers, led by ITV and Channel 4.
“Oti is taking her time deciding on the right jobs,” said a source close to the star. A TV industry insider told us: “The BBC know they’ve lost a huge asset but can’t compete with commercial channels that will let her take on other deals.”
Pro dancer Oti, 31, announced her departure from the BBC’s prime time Saturday night show after seven years this week.
She said: “It has been an incredible time. Lifting the Glitterball twice and having the best journey with all my celebrities. I will always remember Strictly, and the BBC brought me to the UK. I can’t put into words how difficult this decision has been, but I have decided not to return for the next series.”
The eight-time South African Latin American Champion is the only Strictly pro to win two consecutive series – in 2019 with actor Kelvin Fletcher and 2020 with comic Bill Bailey.
TV sources believe she could be as popular as Holly Willoughby, who is estimated to earn £730,000 a year hosting This Morning for ITV.
In the past year ITV have involved Oti in The Masked Dancer, Dancing on Ice and Romeo & Duet.
She’s also been mentored by Channel 4’s Packed Lunch star Steph McGovern while presenting for them in autumn.
TV and celebrity expert Mark Borkowski reckons Oti could make more than £1million over the next year or two in TV gigs and deals.
He added: “We’ve seen people come and go but every channel wants a piece of Oti’s magic.”
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/tv-bosses-queue-hope-land-26337951
‘So many soundbites’: PR experts on Prince Andrew’s disastrous denials
The Guardian
The Duke of York’s legal battle with his accuser Virginia Giuffre, which he settled out of court this week, was characterised by a years-long series of damaging and unnecessary PR blunders, experts have said.
His disastrous Newsnight interview, his ducking and diving to frustrate the serving of legal papers, and claims from “friends” that the infamous photograph of him with his arm around Giuffre’s waist was faked, all served to inflict further public opprobrium on the Queen’s second son, it was claimed.
The aggressive way Andrew fought the case, casting aspersions on Giuffre’s character, also attracted harsh censure from victims’ groups in the era of #MeToo, leading to a “volte face” when, in a joint statement issued this week, he said he had “never intended to malign” her.
Twelve years after he was photographed with the sex offender financier Jeffrey Epstein in New York’s Central Park, Andrew has been stripped of his patronages and titles. And though he has made no admission of liability and has repeatedly denied Guiffre’s allegations he had sex with her on three occasions when she was 17 and had been trafficked by Epstein, he has agreed to pay her an undisclosed sum, reportedly as high as £12m.
“The Emily Maitlis Newsnight interview was like being in a comedy clown car with a lit cigarette driving into a fireworks factory,” said the PR agent Mark Borkowski. “I don’t believe anyone in the profession that I know would have advised him to do the Maitlis interview.
“But he thought he could roll with it. He thought he had the charisma. And he thought that he had his own story. It’s an archetypal psychopathic reaction to the fact you are not accepting [the situation].”
Andrew’s claims in the 2019 interview – that he was at a Pizza Express in Woking and that he had a condition that prevented him from sweating – were absolute gifts to social media, spawning hundreds of memes.
His denial that he had thrown a birthday party for Epstein’s then girlfriend, and now also a convicted sex offender, Ghislaine Maxwell, insisting it was just a “straightforward shooting weekend”, showed how wide the chasm was between him and the public he was attempting to persuade.
“He gave so many soundbites,” said Borkowski. Andrew should have looked to his mother for PR advice. The Queen’s statement that “recollections may vary” in response to claims made by Harry and Meghan in their Oprah interview was a masterclass “in what it said by saying so little”, said Borkowski. “And that is the art of dealing with a crisis.”
Missing from Andrew’s Newsnight interview, and immediately seized on by commentators, was any acknowledgment of Epstein’s victims. It took the joint statement, made earlier this week, for him redress this by accepting that Giuffre had suffered “as an established victim of abuse”.
Missing, too, was any expression of regret over his decades-long friendship with Epstein, who at the time the two were photographed had served 13 months for soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. Again, it took this week’s statement for Andrew to promise to “demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking”.
He did apologise in the interview, not for his relationship with Epstein but for its impact on the royal family. “We try to uphold the highest standards and practice,” he said, “and I let the side down, simple as that.” If he was guilty of anything, added the duke, it was of being “too honourable” in choosing to visit Epstein to break off their friendship in person.
PR experts would hope in such crisis interviews their client would answer questions and address the facts put to them in a way that persuades viewers to interpret those facts in the way you want. A declaration that it’s “just not true” is not enough. “You have to be very certain about how the audience will look at your reactions to a negative comment. And I think another blunder he made was underestimating, not just the media, but … the actual public and … the power of social media,” said Borkowski.
Given the out-of-court settlement agreed in principle, which has spared Andrew the ordeal of cross-examination on his private life before a jury, Maitlis said this week her interview “may be the only testimony” we will ever get directly from the duke. She is far from alone in now finding it difficult to marry his three words to her – “it didn’t happen” – with his decision to pay millions to a woman he has said he had no recollection of meeting.
There are questions, too, over the aggressive tactics used by Andrew, especially in the #MeToo era.
His apparent attempt to frustrate the serving of Giuffre’s legal papers did not play well. “It was unedifying, it looked ridiculous. But, more than a PR disaster, he was annoying the court,” Nick Goldstone, a lawyer at the disputes resolution firm Ince, said.
Andrew’s defence document was “ludicrous in parts”, saying he was unable to answer questions such whether he had been habitually photographed at social events with Maxwell for lack of sufficient information, Goldstone added.
Suggestions from “friends” of Andrew that the photograph of him with his arm around Giuffre’s waist was faked were “high risk”, especially as he did not have the original photograph. His claim of an inability to sweat, and the Pizza Express alibi, were ridiculed. Photographs were published allegedly showing him sweating on other occasions. His security team should have records of any Pizza Express visit – “so, produce those at the time you make the allegation”, Goldstone said.
Andrew’s US legal team “could only play with the cards they were dealt” and on the instructions they received from their client, he said. And, by the time they took on the case, options for the prince were diminishing.
The attacks on Giuffre’s character, accusing her of seeking a “payday” from Andrew, and attempts to introduce in to evidence a US tabloid story describing her as a “money-hungry sex kitten” who recruited young women for Epstein, have also been criticised.
“He took an enormous decision to actually be aggressive. It’s different now, particularly when you are so behind the eight ball you’re snookered. And you come out fighting in the wrong way. His team did all the wrong things really really well,” said Borkowski. It backfired, and Andrew then had to say he did not intend to “malign” Giuffre. “A volte face,” said Goldstone.
But perhaps the biggest blunder was not settling earlier, and only agreeing to after his attempts to have the case struck out failed, Goldstone said. Pinning hopes on Giuffre’s 2009 $500,000 secret settlement with Epstein was “going to be the trump card”. “But in my view, that didn’t have a hope of getting him out of this case.”
Borkowski said: “The bottom line is, if you are representing somebody, or in particular if you are running a crisis campaign, you can give as much good advice as a PR person, but it’s whether the client, whether the person at the centre of the whirlwind, actually accepts it. And I think through all of this, this has been heavily laden with hubris.
“I think I would have gone for the route of settlement, the route of arbitration. That was needed all the way down the line. There needed to be more jaw jaw, less war war.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/19/pr-experts-prince-andrew-disastrous-denials
Unlikely Charles knew of alleged ‘cash for honours’ claims, says biographer
The Guardian
Prince Charles’s biographer, Jonathan Dimbleby, has claimed it is “extraordinarily unlikely” the prince knew of the alleged “cash for honours” scandal, saying the idea he could have been aware “frankly beggars belief”.
Dimbleby defended the heir to the throne as the Metropolitan police launched an investigation into claims the Prince’s Foundation offered to support a Saudi billionaire donor’s application for citizenship and upgrade his CBE to a knighthood.
The broadcaster and friend of the prince, who wrote Charles’s authorised biography, criticised claims it was “inconceivable” Charles would not have known of the honours offer. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “That is a very colourful thing to have said. ‘Inconceivable’ suggests that there is no possibility other than that he knew. I think it is extraordinarily unlikely that he knew. I think if he had known, he would immediately have taken action about it.”
Clarence House has said the prince had “no knowledge” of the alleged scandal and was “happy to help if asked” with the police investigation, but had not been. His former close aide Michael Fawcett, who has since resigned as chief executive of the Prince’s Foundation, allegedly wrote a letter to the Saudi businessman Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz, making the offer apparently in return for a generous donation.
Dimbleby said Charles believed in the honours system, understood it, and had conducted many thousands of investitures. “If there has been some scam, some breaking of the law, you honestly think he would have been party to that? It beggars belief,” he said.
He dismissed as insignificant reports in the Daily Mail that the investiture for the Saudi businessman had taken place in Buckingham Palace’s blue drawing room, which the paper said is usually reserved for world leaders, and accused it of “finding fire where there is not even any smoke”.
Praising Charles’s charity work, Dimbleby said the royal was president, not a trustee or chief executive of the charity. And, though once close to Fawcett, it “does not mean that Michael Fawcett would have said to him: ‘I just want you to know that I’m thinking of offering an honour on behalf of the Foundation to a Saudi businessman.’ I mean, come off it”.
He criticised parts of the media’s ability to “turn a non-bombshell into a bombshell” and compared claims Charles must have known to the smearing of the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, “for allegedly not investigating Jimmy Savile”.
The former home office minister Norman Baker, who along with the campaign group Republic reported the allegations to the Metropolitan police as a possible breach of the Honours Act, believed Clarence House would be thrilled with Dimbleby’s interview.
“Arise Sir Jonathan,” Baker said. He added: “When the going gets tough, Jonathan Dimbleby is rolled out to defend the prince.
“The idea that Dimbleby skates over, is the ‘I know nothing’, kind of Manuel [from Fawlty Towers] response to everything. Fact is, we know Charles and Fawcett are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Charles has said he’s the one man he cannot do without. So the idea that Fawcett would be doing stuff without Charles knowing, it is inconceivable,” Baker said.
Mark Borkowski , an author and PR expert, said it appeared to him that Dimbleby’s interview could demonstrate that Charles, his aides and friends “are up for a fight now”.
“They are wheeling out the big guns. Because that was a peerless interview, defending Charles and attacking the Daily Mail. It shows that they are not going to take this lying down. They are not going to go back to ‘never complain, never explain’.”
Beatrice and Eugenie to keep Jubilee roles as public won’t punish them for Prince Andrew scandal, say experts
The i
Prince Andrew’s daughters are unlikely to be banished from Platinum Jubilee celebrations this summer because they have managed to successfully distance themselves from their father, according to royal experts.
The Duke of York’s decision to come to an out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre in her civil sex claim against him is believed to have been motivated by efforts to protect the Queen’s Jubilee festivities, marking her 70 years on the throne.
PR agent Mark Borkowski said: “Clearly, the first priority of this act of settlement is to give the Jubilee a clean pair of heels away from him. This is to save further embarrassment to his mother, the Queen… the stench of an unresolved legal case was too dangerous.
“This is probably the last big state occasion linked to some anniversary… it’s the one thing this country does well, these events.”
While the monarch’s second son, who previously stepped back from public duties, will be absent from the celebrations, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie may well play a part.
Professor Pauline Maclaren, co-author of Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture, said: “I don’t think Prince Andrew’s scandal will affect the two princesses and I would expect that they will still have roles to play in the jubilee celebrations.
Professor MacLaren, of Royal Holloway, University of London, added: “Both have managed to achieve quite separate identities, independent from their father’s, and I don’t think the public would expect them to be punished as well.”
Buckingham Palace has said the Queen and members of the Royal Family will watch the traditional RAF flypast from the palace’s balcony on Thursday 2 June. The monarch will also be accompanied at the Derby at Epsom Downs on Saturday 4 June.
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie appear to have gone to great efforts to distance themselves from the controversies surrounding their father.
Prince Andrew was missing from official photos of Princess Beatrice’s low-key wedding to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi in July 2020, although he did walk her down the aisle. However the couple did share a photo featuring the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
And in a demonstration of independence within the Royal Family, Princess Eugenie was seen with her cousin Prince Harry at the Super Bowl in the US.
What’s next for Prince Andrew? Exile from public life and a tainted image, royal-watchers say.
Washington Post
I work with celebrities, so take it from me – fame has never been so dangerous
The Guardian
Fame is a sweet poison you drink of first in eager gulps. Then you come to loathe it.” Richard Burton’s aphorism, and the context of his turbulent stardom, is still a near perfect summary of the nature of fame; but as our polarised society and media-industrial complex continue to engorge and mutate, new strains of this toxin hit the market almost daily.
Two years on, the collective guilt felt by many of us over the death of Caroline Flack, which has never truly subsided, was again brought to the fore by her mother’s forceful accusation yesterday that the police treated Caroline differently – more harshly – simply because she was famous.
Whether or not this was the case, it is my view that fame has never been so dangerous, never been more toxic. The commodification of fame has existed for a century. Fame is a value that allows you to sell a product, and for decades stars have been treated merely as the human embodiment of this value. And like any commodity, once their fame, their value, begins to wane they cease to become useful.
There’s an old Hollywood legend about a Danish actor called Gwili Andre, who found success in the silent era but her voice didn’t work for the age of sound. This caused her to fade into obscurity during the advent of the “talkie”. She died in a mysterious fire in 1959, and ever stories have circulated that the cause of the fire was a kind of funeral pyre Andre had built out of her old press cuttings.
What makes Andre’s story, pyre or not, even more tragic is that her fame was in part manufactured by lavish publicity campaigns. Organic fame is hard enough to manage, but prefabricated fame is cheap, flimsy and rarely lasts long, to the detriment of those who experience it.
These truths are as old as the concept of fame itself, but in the 2020s the dangers are potent and multifaceted. First, there’s the way fame comes to be. The reality TV production line in the 2000s might have ground to a halt but it created a world in which people are famous for fame’s sake rather than as a result of any particular talent.
Experiencing fame without talent is to exist on the constant precipice of anonymity. In desperation to claw themselves away from this cliff edge and into the deceitful comfort of the limelight, celebrities will willingly sacrifice their principles and even their dignity. Some effectively donate their personal lives to the tabloid and celebrity media, some stoop to humiliating depths by agreeing to be part of whatever tawdry novelty sideshow will continue their exposure, and some will spout whatever hateful opinion or item of fake news a loyal sect of the internet will laud them for.
Legacy media and online evangelists will always praise the glittering riches of celebrity, but the fame superhighway is littered with the bleached bones of many who have walked that path: Jade Goody, Charlie Sheen, Corey Feldman, Mackenzie Phillips, Katie Price, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Macaulay Culkin, Anna Nicole Smith – all have met their unfortunate fate on the boulevard of broken dreams.
Social media has compounded this issue by giving wannabe celebrities the power to create fame without the need of a broker. It’s far from democratic but nor is social-media fame any more meritocratic. Sure, there’s a skill to painstakingly stage-managing every detail of your appearance and curating every public moment of your life, but people’s desperation to do so in pursuit of fame has created a lower caste of celebrities in the form of the influencer market. Since influencers’ value to brands depends directly on their popularity (and, increasingly, vice versa) this only increases the fervour of their pursuit of fame, and the likelihood that they will be dropped at a moment’s notice, the moment the likes and shares dip below market value.
Which brings me to another reason why fame is more toxic than ever; the speed and brutality with which it can turn negative, or even come to an end.
Scandal and the downfall of celebrity have always carried with them tremendous news value and been sought jealously by certain segments of the media and society. The infamous MGM publicity machine-cum-protection racket run by Howard Strickling, the notorious head of publicity from the 1920s to the 1960s, ensured, at great cost to the talent, that Hollywood’s finest were protected from such scandals.
But even the dastardly Strickling would have his work cut out in an era where access to means of recording and communicating celebrity scandals is practically universal, and motivation to do so has scarcely been higher – politicised and tribalised by the culture wars, and industrialised by the spate of celebrity downfalls referred to as “cancel culture”.
Every celebrity now exists under a microscope with a target on their back and a bounty on their head. And every member of the public is armed with ways to bring them in – hot or cold – and collect the bounty.
This situation is still particularly bad for women, constantly held to higher standards and vilified for things that men brush off even in today’s cynical shark tank of public opinion.
What makes the experience of toxic fame more shocking for its victims is that they are, for a short time, often insulated from its danger by a bubble of managers, agents, brand partners and, yes, publicists, razor-teeth hiding behind sycophantic smiles and cooing platitudes designed to foster whatever infantile god complex will get the next deal across the line.
If, as Burton seemed to suggest, fame is a noxious but highly addictive drug, then we live in a society where it’s cheap to get high, but the quality of the drug is variable, the supply is controlled by a cartel of enablers who can cut your supply at a moment’s notice, and there’s no such thing as rehab. Fame has never been more dangerous.
Royals ‘played very smart PR card’ with dramatic Prince Andrew move
The Express
The Duke of York is facing a civil sexual assault trial in the US in the autumn which threatens to overshadow the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, with each development potentially producing negative headlines. He denies the allegations.
Last month, Andrew lost his honorary military titles, royal patronages and agreed to stop using his HRH style in an apparent bid to distance the monarchy from him.
PR expert Mark Borkowski said the royals “played a very smart PR card by severing him off from them”.
Mr Borkowski told Express.co.uk: “If they didn’t do that then it would be a totally different ballgame.
“But what he intends to pursue privately and the noise he’s creating is not reflected back to the Royal Family as he’s no longer part of the brand.
“Obviously he is the Queen’s son but she has done, or his brother has done, an amazing job in separating in the best way possible, saying he can no longer enjoy his military titles and his titles.
“That is the equivalent of being banished beyond the castle walls to find your own way.
“And hence that’s why he’s pursuing this so aggressively now to make some way for him to come back.
“But he’s a bust brand, he’s over.”
The Queen stripped Andrew of his royal patronages and honorary military roles in a dramatic fallout from his civil sex case in January.
The decision represents Andrew’s complete removal from official royal life.
The move came after a judge threw out the Duke’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit and ruled it can go to trial in a huge blow to the royal.
Virginia Giuffre is suing the Queen’s second son in the US for allegedly sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager.
She claims she was trafficked by Andrew’s friend Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with him when she was 17 and a minor under US law.
The Duke has strenuously denied all the allegations.
In the latest development, Andrew has demanded a trial by jury in the civil sex assault case.
Legal experts had predicted the royal would seek a settlement.
But he has taken the sensational decision to face his accuser in court and become the first member of the modern Royal Family to submit to being cross examined over serious allegations.
Irate fans who spent thousands to see Adele in Las Vegas demand star pays for flights and hotels after finding out MID-AIR that she has axed her entire residency just 24 HOURS before first gig – as PR experts warn this is a ‘disaster’ for the star
Daily Mail
Adele fans today demanded the singer covers the cost of their Las Vegas flights and hotels after her ‘astounding’ decision to axe all her shows at the 11th hour when many were flying in or had already arrived in the entertainment capital of the world.
MailOnline has been inundated with emails from people who had already jetted into Sin City from across the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK and Europe to see the star, who is making a record-breaking $685,000 (£500,000) per gig before merchandising.
Adele announced the decision in a tearful Instagram video, apologising and telling fans: ‘I’m so upset and I’m really embarrassed. We’ve been absolutely destroyed by delivery delays and Covid. Half my crew and team are [ill] with Covid and still are, and it’s been impossible to finish the show’.
Fans paying between $85 and $12,000 for a ticket – or up to $30,000 on the black market – had already travelled to Las Vegas for the opening gig tonight. If they get tickets for replacement shows, now likely to be after Easter, most will be unable to go without more extraordinary expense and more time off work.
PR guru Mark Borkowski told MailOnline the last minute cancellation was a ‘disaster’ for the singer, saying: ‘It’s not great for Adele and I think she knows it’, adding: ‘Her response seemed very authentic. I guess it’s down to whether the fans believe her word’.
Mr Borkowski says that Adele’s PR team will have to do something to appease the upset fans. He said: ‘I’m sure they will be considering a plan’.
He said: ‘In truth for any high-profile artist in any field particularly music cancelling a gig per ticket short notice is a disaster.
‘Artist agents know PR is all about understanding the importance of the fan. Frankly many of them wouldn’t be there without them.
‘Cancelling a gig is a last resort. It’s not great for Adele and I think she knows it. One can see this by watching her painful statement on social media. Adele is a communicator and understands her audience so her response seemed very authentic.
‘I guess it’s down to whether the fans believe her words. I’m sure there are number of fans making this journey and it is a very special and expensive moment for them. It will be interesting to see if any gestures are made to those in desperate need’.
Ticketmaster are urging people to ‘hang on to their tickets’ for new dates predicted to be between April and June – but says they will give refunds if people apply online. But many are already in Vegas having travelled thousands of miles to be there for the opening night, demanding the singer covers the thousands of dollars they have already laid out on flights and hotel rooms they have no hope of getting refunds for.
Many are questioning her reasons for cancelling, saying they don’t believe her claims that Covid and ‘delivery delays’ would require her to cancel all 24 nights and postpone them for months. Several fans said they were worried for her wellbeing, noticing a bruise-like mark on her left wrist in the video.
Fans already in Vegas are demanding she performs anyway, saying they don’t care about a glitzy stage and lighting and would be happy to see her ‘perform on a park bench’. Some say they will turn up at Caesars Palace at 8pm tonight anyway, in the hope she might be there, although she is understood to be at home in LA.
Gillian Rowland-Kain, 32, was already on her flight to Las Vegas from New York with her twin sister when she found out about the cancellation via social media. The attorney from Brooklyn said: ‘I was furious that Adele waited so last minute to make this call. I recognise it’s not a call any artist wants to make but she would’ve known yesterday that the show wouldn’t be ready by tomorrow. Her lack of notice is astounding. I’m angry and frustrated’.
Thomas Wright flew from South Carolina for the opening night with a friend for the opening night. He told MailOnline that they spent $445 on each ticket, $1,600 on flights and hotel as well as $100 on Covid tests. They also spent $400 each on new outfits.
He said: ‘I know I will not be able to get off of work to come back, I know I wouldn’t be able to afford to come back. This trip has been a collection of Christmas and birthday gifts plus saving for myself’.
A British fan called David posted a photo from outside Caesars Palace just after the shows were axed. He tweeted: ‘Christmas gift gone pear shaped as my wife and daughter are on the way to meet me in Vegas and unfortunately Adele has had to cancel’.
Adele was due to perform her biggest hits and most of her new album 30, which she says reflects her ‘inner turmoil’ at the end of her marriage to Simon Konecki, leaving her to ‘sob relentlessly’ as she made the record. She has since found love with sports agent Rich Paul, who she has hinted she would like to marry.
Like Britain and Europe, the US has also suffered an explosion of Omicron cases over the past month. But cases are now starting to slow down nationwide, where quarantine was recently cut to five days. If the Omicron outbreak continues to shrink in America, it will mirror trends seen in South Africa – the first nation to fall victim to the extremely-transmissible variant – and the UK, where experts have accepted it is in retreat.
Most coming to the opening shows face losing thousands of dollars on flights and accommodation after the British singer cancelled all 24 shows at the 11th hour claiming half her team has Covid and they ‘ran out of time’. Most airlines and Vegas hotels demand 48 hours notice for cancellations, if they allow it at all.
Another fan, Gabriel, flew into Vegas from Quebec, Canada, and found out when they arrived in Nevada. He told MailOnline: ‘We lost a large sum of money on plane tickets and hotels to come see her for nothing, pretty unacceptable that a multi-million dollar production team could pull the rug on the people who flew and risked getting Covid to see her because her ‘show’ wasn’t ready. She is known for her voice not for her performances, for all I care I would’ve just enjoyed her sitting on a bench singing. Absolutely unacceptable, they have not mentioned anything about compensation for the travel expenses we had’.
Weekends With Adele’ was due to run through April in Las Vegas, with all available tickets sold out. In an Instagram post late on Thursday, a visibly upset Adele said in her strong London accent: ‘I’m so sorry, but my show ain’t ready’, saying they ‘ran out of time’.
She went on: ‘We’ve tried absolutely everything we can to put it together in time and for it to be good enough for you, but we’ve been absolutely destroyed by delivery delays and COVID. Half my crew and team are [ill] with Covid and still are, and it’s been impossible to finish the show.
‘I’m gutted — I’m sorry it’s so last minute, we’ve been awake for over 30 hours trying to figure it out and we’ve run out of time,’ she continued, as her voice started to break. ‘I’m so upset and I’m really embarrassed and so sorry to everyone that traveled to get [to the show]. I’m really, really sorry.’
Adele did not say when the shows would be rescheduled, but there is speculation it could be from April, meaning anyone keeping their tickets will have to rebook all flights and accommodation. But there will be many who will no longer be able to go.
Fans wished her and her team well but questioned why Adele and her team had only come to that conclusion on the eve of her first show.
One woman accused Adele of ‘crocodile tears’, pointing out that obtaining refunds for travel and hotels was always complicated, while another posted a picture of a furious emoji, tweeting: ‘Not Adele rescheduling after already buying plane tickets, show tickets & getting a hotel room’.
One fan wrote: ‘What is wrong with the industry when Adele cancels her upcoming shows in Las Vegas – the day before opening? I’m sure she is devastated but fans already there from many places in the world will be extremely upset. I hope the Adele team comes up with something to appease fans’.
Another person with a ticket said: ‘Super bummed that Adele has postponed all of her shows in Las Vegas. I’ve already spent $1200 between airfare, hotel, and the concert tickets. Not to mention vacation time from work’.
The price tag for the Weekends With Adele at Caesars Palace’s Colosseum starts at £700 and ranges to £9,000 plus for the best seats in the house.
Adele, already worth an estimated $220million, was due to have access to Caesars $50,000-a-night private suite throughout her residency, which comes with a butler, executive assistant, chauffeur and security. A source said: ‘She is expected to make over £500,000 per gig thanks to ticket sales alone, even before the merchandising. Caesars has rolled out the red carpet to ensure she’s treated like the superstar she is’.
It is not clear why a 14-day COVID outbreak would postpone a multimillion-dollar show for months.
In November, she told Rolling Stone that she would not go on tour because she was worried about the logistics during the pandemic.
‘It’s too unpredictable, with all the rules and stuff,’ she said. ‘I don’t want anyone coming to my show scared. And I don’t want to get COVID, either.’
Fans of the 33-year-old singer had shelled out up to $30,000 for resale tickets for the eagerly-anticipated show – her first live concert in five years.
In a video posted to Twitter, Adele sobbed as she said that COVID-19 cases among members of her crew had made it impossible to bring the show to life in time.
Adding to her woes were delivery delays that made it ‘impossible to finish the show.’
She added that she had been awake for ‘over 30 hours’ trying to solve logistical issues but had simply ‘run out of time’ to be ready on Friday.
Many were sympathetic, but plenty were frustrated.
‘This breaks my heart, for you and for me,’ tweeted Amy Campbell, a medical professional in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
‘I know how hard it is to put on a show, especially with a pandemic. But it’s also hard to save enough money, to get time off work from a hospital, that is short staffed, book a flight and hotel, fly in two days early and find out 30 hrs before the show, when we are already here, that the reason we came for is not going to happen.
‘The people with first weekend show tickets may not be able to afford the time or money to reschedule something like this.’
A British man noted: ‘Unbelievable. What a disgrace. I thought the yanks had their house in order. Rona or no rona, the show must go on.’
‘So disappointed!’ said another woman.
‘My husband got me tickets for Christmas and we were looking forward to it so bad! I guess we’ll have to wait until Avril Lavigne announces a tour since we’re also huge fans of her.’
The Can I Get It singer pledged to reschedule the canceled shows – but gave no indication of when that could be.
She added: ‘We’re going to reschedule all of the dates, we’re on it right now, and I’m gonna finish my show and get it to where it’s supposed to be. So I’m so sorry it isn’t possible. We’ve been up against so much and it just ain’t ready. I’m really sorry.’
The team had implemented intense COVID protocols.
The production required ticket-holders to show proof of COVID vaccination, and also display a negative-COVID test within 48 hours of the show.
A rapid-test station was being set up Thursday afternoon at the former Rao’s Restaurant space, and another across the Strip at the Flamingo, to handle the influx of those needed on-site testing.
A choir of 60 singers, all hired in Las Vegas, had passed auditions on January 5 to participate in a ‘Skyfall’ opening number, according to The Las Vegas Review-Journal. The original call was for 100 singers, but only 60 could show up.
Hospitalizations in Clark County, Nevada – which encompasses Las Vegas – are approaching the record for the pandemic, with 1,872 people hospitalized statewide as of January 18.
The record was set December 13, 2020, with 2,025 patients.
The test positivity rate is 37 percent, compared to a seven-day average of 18.95 percent in New York City, which has passed the Omicron peak.
Her dramatic decision came as other performers felled by COVID, such as Hugh Jackman, swiftly rescheduled their performances and were back on stage in New York within weeks. He resumed Broadway performances on January 6, having tested positive for COVID on December 28.
The Strokes cancelled their New Year’s Eve show in Madison Square Garden, but have already rescheduled it for April 6.
Also at Madison Square Garden, Billy Joel announced on January 11 he was pushing his January 14 performance to August 24th.
Celine Dion, who previously had an incredibly lucrative Las Vegas residency, announced on January 15 she was cancelling the remaining 16 dates of her North American tour due to ‘severe and persistent muscle spasms which are preventing her from performing’.
Other groups have been creative in compensating for the COVID challenges.
When Dead & Company’s guitarist John Mayer and drummer Bill Kreutzmann tested positive, they were replaced by other musicians – although of course with a soloist that was unlikely to appease everyone.
One fan accused Adele of ‘crocodile tears’, pointing out that the singer had canceled her shows before.
Another said: ‘Same tears when she cancelled our Wembley tickets, still waiting for the rescheduled concert for her uk fans.
‘Got refund took a while (trains, hotel didn’t tho).
‘the point is when u cry each time and send email saying sorry and when I get better I will do a concert for all that missed the show that she supposed to do. But she doesn’t it’s a bit crocodile tears4me.’
Another complained: ‘When it’s your bday and your bday present was Adele tickets to her opening night and she cancels not even 24 hours before.’
Gillian Rowland-Kain, 32, was already on her flight to Las Vegas from New York for Friday’s opening night show when she found out about the cancellation via social media.
‘I was furious that Adele waited so last minute to make this call,’ she told the BBC.
‘I recognize it’s not a call any artist wants to make but she would’ve known yesterday that the show wouldn’t be ready by tomorrow.
‘Her lack of notice is astounding. I’m angry and frustrated.’
Rowland-Kain, who is from Brooklyn and traveling to Vegas with her twin sister, added that the last-minute cancellation felt ‘like a slap in the face’.
Josh Chavis, from Kansas City, says his wife Heather paid nearly $1,800 for her hotel and flights to Vegas for a show this weekend.
He said even Adele announcing it a few days sooner ‘would have made all the difference’ in terms of refunds.
‘We recognize that things are hard for everyone, but this is a huge misstep on the part of both the performer and those responsible for putting the show together.’…
Andrew’s civil sex case ‘could lead to constitutional crisis for monarchy’
Evening Standard
The Duke of York’s sexual assault trial, given the go-ahead by a US judge, threatens to set off a “constitutional crisis” which will engulf the royal family, a legal expert said.
Andrew now faces the prospect of his accuser Virginia Giuffre giving a detailed account in court of the allegation she was trafficked to have sex with the Queen’s second son when she was 17 and a minor under US law.
Judge Lewis A Kaplan dismissed a motion by the duke’s lawyers to have the civil case thrown out after they argued Ms Giuffre had waived her right to pursue the duke by signing a confidential settlement with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The judgment will be a huge blow for Andrew, and media lawyer Mark Stephens said it will prompt meetings of senior royals as they attempt to deal with the looming reputational damage to the monarchy during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee year.
Mr Stephens told the BBC: “Judge Lewis Kaplan has thrown a reasoned judicial decision like a bomb into the middle and the heart of the royal family and threatens to provoke constitutional crisis as a consequence.”
He said the duke has “no good options”, adding: “Essentially, I think he’s either going to have to engage in the trial process or he’s going to have to settle and that may well be his least worst option.”
Sigrid McCawley, managing partner at law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, said the decision was a significant moment for her client Ms Giuffre.
She said: “Today’s decision by Judge Kaplan denying Prince Andrew’s effort to dismiss Virginia Giuffre’s case against him is another important step in Virginia‘s heroic and determined pursuit of justice as a survivor of sex trafficking.”
Andrew’s accuser is suing him for allegedly sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager.
She is seeking unspecified damages, but there is speculation the sum could be in the millions of dollars.
The duke has vehemently denied the allegations and his legal team has argued from the lawsuit’s first hearing that the case is “baseless”.
Mr Stephens added: “Prince Andrew has nowhere to go. He’s effectively a dead man walking as far as the royal family is concerned.
“But the one thing he can do is to accept the responsibility, accept the blame, accept that he has to fall on his sword for the sake of the wider royal family.”
Andrew has three main options – ignoring the lawsuit, which is his right, engaging with the American legal system to defend himself against the allegations or attempting to reach an out-of-court settlement with Ms Giuffre.
If he ignores the civil proceedings a default judgement will be made in favour of Ms Giuffre.
His accuser may not want to agree a settlement but rather have her day in court but if a settlement is reached it may be viewed unfavourably by the public.
Watching in the wings is the criminal arm of the American justice system and if the duke gives evidence any new details are likely to be noted, like his BBC Newsnight interview which attempted to draw a line under events but provided Ms Giuffre’s legal team with much information.
David Boies, lawyer for Ms Giuffre, was asked on Sky News what his client wanted: “I think she wants to achieve justice and I think justice has a variety of aspects to it.”
He went on to highlight the infamous picture showing Andrew with his arm around Ms Giuffre: “First, I think it is a judicial determination of who is telling the truth. I think it is whether the photograph is, as we have asserted, a real photograph or whether it is somehow a fabricated photograph as some of Prince Andrew’s people have suggested.
“I think it is a recognition on the part of Prince Andrew of his conduct and I think it is compensation to Virginia for what happened.”
Public relations and crisis consultant Mark Borkowski criticised the handling of the duke’s lawsuit: “In PR terms this is the equivalent of driving a comedy clown car with a lit cigarette into a fireworks factory.”
He suggested the duke’s desire to return to frontline royal status, by trying to end the civil case against him, was damaging the royal family.
Mr Borkowski said: “The bottom line is he will want to go back, so it will be him pushing and pushing and pushing to try and get back into public life and that wounds the royal family who are trying to move on.”
Mr Borkowski said the only option for the duke was to step back from public life completely and reconsider his role or to defend himself against the civil action in court.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman asked about the development said: “We would not comment on what is an ongoing legal matter.”
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/virginia-giuffre-prince-crime-bbc-sky-news-b976384.html
The Art Of The Cancellation Comeback
Grazia
Earlier this month, Chrissy Teigen posted a series of photos of herself on Instagram wearing a Halloween costume nobody would describe as low-key: a flamboyant Carmen Miranda-inspired ensemble comprising a skirt with bananas dangling from it, and a basket of fruit perched perilously on her head. In one picture, she posed with an apparently homemade meatloaf, informing her 35.8 million followers that her cookbook ‘is 5 dollars cheaper on Amazon today!!!’
Looking at them, you’d never guess that as recently as five months ago, the model, entrepreneur and social media maestro had been cancelled. Back in May, her career appeared to lie in tatters after it emerged she’d used her Twitter account to troll TV personalities in the past, including encouraging one to kill herself. She was over. Dunzo. Or was she?
To recap, being cancelled is essentially a cultural boycott; a decision by fans that an individual has done something so heinous, they’re no longer worthy of attention. In recent years, it’s felt like virtually everybody, from Taylor Swift to JK Rowling, has been subject to this phenomenon, to a lesser or greater degree.
For some stars, like Teigen, the damage can seem irreparable; our fundamental perception of them has changed. Yet her comeback, while not complete, is in motion – and so far, it seems pretty successful. While clearly some people remain cancelled – Harvey Weinstein, now in jail, for one – short of outright criminality, most people have the ability to come back, believes PR expert Mark Borkowski.
Teigen’s recovery has been a masterclass in cancellation rehabilitation. The first step she took was apologising profusely, saying, ‘Not a single day, not a single moment has passed where I haven’t felt the crushing weight of regret for things I’ve said in the past.’ She was also careful to take time away from social media to reflect on her actions, and even now she’s back, she still refers to them in comments such as, ‘Cancel club is a fascinating thing and I have learned a whollllle lot.’
For Sara McCorquodale, founder of influencer intelligence platform CORQ, saying sorry, and in the right way, is crucial. ‘There has to be a very sincere apology, so their audience can entertain the idea that they’re only human and made a mistake,’ she says. ‘It’s also helpful to be transparent about what they’re doing to right whatever lead to their cancellation, so it’s not just a case of leaving social media for a few days and coming back expecting everything to be the same.’
The right apology can nip a backlash in the bud, as was the case when this year’s documentary Framing Britney Spears highlighted the role Justin Timberlake had played in demonising his former girlfriend. ‘I am deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, or did not speak up for what was right,’ he wrote on Instagram, naming Spears and also Janet Jackson, who suffered a backlash after her nipple was exposed during her 2004 Superbowl performance with him.
By contrast, Kendall Jenner’s lack of public apology in the six months after her appearance in that 2017 Pepsi advert – in which she resolved a protest by handing a police officer a can of the soft drink – allowed the scandal to spiral and linked her to it permanently.
Influencers are particularly prone to being cancelled, because what they’re selling often isn’t a talent or body of work, but their own lives – and if their audience discovers they aren’t who they portrayed themselves as, woe betide them. Jeffree Star, one of YouTube’s most subscribed beauty influencers, was at the centre of a storm last year after allegations of racism and predatory behaviour were made against him (which he denied), but has managed to carry on after making several apology videos. Sometimes, says Mark, rehabilitation is a case of ‘weathering the storm, because tomorrow there’ll be another story for everyone to pick over.’
Clemmie Hooper, the midwife-turned-mumfluencer, may be attempting a stealthier comeback after being cancelled in 2019 when it emerged that she’d been trolling other influencers under a fake name on the toxic gossip site TattleLife. Recently, she has been increasingly appearing on her husband’s @Father_Of_Daughters account (including a recent anniversary photo taken of the couple in the bath) and in an account dedicated to their house renovation.
Sara suspects a pivot may be in action. ‘I wonder if they’ve attracted a different audience with their renovation account, which is less au fait with what happened,’ she says. ‘They can still make money from it, but Clemmie is less directly in the firing line. It’s possible for her to re-emerge as a different type of influencer without necessarily putting her name to it.’ The pivot strategy worked for Logan Paul, the vlogger who sparked widespread criticism for posting a video showing the body of a Japanese suicide victim. He’s now making more money than ever after reinventing himself as a boxer.
Mel Gibson has a long history of alleged anti-Semitism, yet remains a major Hollywood player, while Johnny Depp’s career continues despite his status as a domestic abuser being proved in court. Mark points out that they have vast resources at their disposal, including teams of PRs, ‘and a loyal fan base built up over many years – that older audience is more forgiving than the younger one.’ It’s difficult to imagine women in the same position being allowed to carry on, however.
What’s clear is that cancel culture isn’t going away anytime soon – and the most important thing for cancelled celebrities to realise is that their predicament is usually their own fault. ‘People are usually cancelled because they’re out of touch with today’s culture and they say or do things without realising they’re a problem,’ says Sara. ‘If enough people who follow them are angry, it’s very hard to find a way back because ultimately, their success is entirely down to their audience.’
The Art Of The Cancellation Comeback | Grazia (graziadaily.co.uk)
Can deliberately provoking ad complaints work as a marketing strategy?
Campaign
Two very different types of campaigns from BrewDog and John Lewis have drawn consumer complaints recently.
BrewDog, the self-styled punk brewer, displayed some softer edges this week after finding itself on the wrong side of an Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruling.
The offending work was a promotion that offered consumers the chance to win a “solid gold, 24-carat” can via two tweets and a Facebook post. The cans turned out to be gold plated not solid gold, provoking the ire of those who won them. The ASA upheld 25 complaints and a chastened BrewDog ate humble pie, blaming a “miscommunication between its marketing and social media teams”.
It wasn’t always like this, of course. Back when BrewDog was a scrappy young pup with limited budget, creating noise by causing offence was very part of its marketing toolkit.
The spats that occurred over the years are too numerous – and perhaps too tedious – to list, but memorable moments include BrewDog calling the ASA “motherfuckers” for demanding the removal of that word from its website back in 2013. At the time, the regulator’s invitation to BrewDog to a Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) training course seemed about as likely to be accepted as… a brand giving away solid gold cans.
Then, after going back on a previous claim by founder James Watt, who once declared he would rather “set fire” to his money than invest in traditional advertising, a billboard ad fell foul of the watchdog.
“Sober as a motherfu” was the tagline on the 2019 poster promoting its alcohol-free beer, Punk AF, channelling what seems to be BrewDog’s favourite expletive. The inevitable happened and the work, created by Uncommon Creative Studio, was banned.
Yet no single piece of BrewDog marketing has generated the amount of complaints and conversation as John Lewis’ latest spot for its insurance. Featuring a boy in a dress causing havoc as he dances with a passion around the house, more than 300 people have complained about the ad to the ASA. With gender identity currently one of the hot-button culture war issues, the ad has set social media alight.
Unlike BrewDog, John Lewis has made its mark on the nation’s consciousness by evoking warmth through its marketing output, rather than anger, and few would suggest the retailer single-mindedly set out to draw complaints. But given the current climate, its marketers and ad agency, Adam & Eve/DDB, will have been aware they would raise some eyebrows.
Perhaps they decided that the risk was worth it for the cut-through. Certainly, there must be many more people who now know that John Lewis does home insurance who didn’t before. The retailer itself is playing it with a straight bat, saying the ad “simply shows a young boy getting carried away with his dramatic performance”.
So in this age of outrage, can deliberately provoking ad complaints work as a marketing strategy?
Jo Arden
Chief strategy officer, Publicis.Poke
We’re living in a new era of activism. More people have more to say about more stuff than they have for some time. We’re hearing views that would previously have been shouted down, from voices that would have been silenced.
At the same time, advertising is increasingly irrelevant. If what we make gets enough attention to gather complaints, we’ve cracked the relevance problem. Conviction is key: say something with substance and welcome the challenge. Make sure your stance is defensible. Involve the communities who have a stake in the issue but remember that not one of us can speak for all of us on the things that matter most.
As a strategy, work that makes people feel enough to give you feedback can’t be knocked – outrage is always better than apathy.
Nick Hulley
Joint executive creative director, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO
I’m not sure deliberately provoking complaints is a strategy. How long before the approach will feel jaded, contrived or even cynical?
I think it is far more interesting to think about it in terms of accepting that your work might attract complaints because it is work that pushes past the status quo to find powerful, fresh stories; it’s work that is not afraid to have an opinion; it’s work that is willing to piss off a few people in order to connect with so many more.
The work that is never complained about is the anodyne work that is never noticed. And that seems an even poorer strategy.
Paul Mallon
Head of special ops, Lucky Generals
Driving debate through creative is a fine craft. Likewise, throwing sharp wit at events can lighten the load for consumers in a society that’s creaking under the weight of the world.
But deliberately provoking ad complaints is madness, and potentially costly, because just one valid complaint being upheld by the ASA can derail a campaign.
It’s tricky to cut through and not draw some flak (something brand chiefs should be aware of) but there’s increasing evidence the standard of complaint ain’t what it used to be either.
Whatever a brand does should be rooted in a more intelligent, bigger strategy. If you just go out to upset people, there’s a risk you end up looking like the kid at school who set fire to bins.
Gen Kobayashi
Chief strategy officer, Engine Creative
I’m not sure either of these ads was conceived to deliberately provoke complaints. The John Lewis ad was a remix of “Tiny dancer” and BrewDog ran a golden can promotion that turned out to be less golden than promised.
Whilst it’s true that the latest John Lewis ad has racked up more complaints that any other this year, I doubt the intention was ever this. Instead, I suspect the intention was to make the brand culturally resonant.
This means giving the brand the opportunity to join or generate conversations that are bigger than advertising, and I’d argue this latest John Lewis work has done exactly that.
Whether it’s the yearly Christmas blockbuster or this latest ad, John Lewis has a knack of joining a wider cultural conversation. Choosing to use a boy rocking out in his mother’s clothes has meant the brand has joined a public conversation (whether it likes it or not).
Visha Naul
Director of business marketing EMEA, Pinterest
I love seeing brands pushing the boundaries of creativity when it comes to marketing, creating new ways to engage consumers. But I’m a firm believer that consumers should only have content in their feeds that is trustworthy. With misleading content, you leave all credibility at the door. Losing consumer confidence erodes brand loyalty and ultimately affects the bottom line.
Kyle Harman-Turner
Executive creative director and co-founder, Other
I once had three of the top five most complained about ads of the year. There was some debate as to whether this was a bad thing or a badge of honour?
Over the years, I’ve gone on to make ads with people being kidnapped, whipped or pole dancing before the watershed, to name but a few.
In the short term, I think it can work as a strategy to gain attention quickly and land a tone of voice. Like the Greggs “Baby Jesus” sausage roll. But I wouldn’t build an entire long-term brand strategy just around baiting for complaints.
For me, complaints aren’t something to be feared, but often just an acknowledgement that we’re for some and not for others. That’s OK. Lots of ads are so desperate to speak to everybody, that they end up speaking to nobody.
Mark Borkowski
Founder, Borkowski PR
Controversy as a tool is a double-edged sword. Without strategic thinking about where it will take you, it seldom pays off. Malcolm McLaren’s mischief and mayhem inspired me to become a publicist. However, Malcolm’s 20th-century modus operandi would struggle to navigate this complex age. Controversy as a tactic involves a combination of forethought and intuition – you have to know where the maelstrom will cast you and, perhaps more importantly, how to survive a cruel uncertainty
In the case of the recent John Lewis ad (which was atrocious as an idea), I’m not sure that that forethought about how to shape the controversy was there. That said, its unlikely to hurt its bottom line: unless a brand, product or person is “cancelled” due to complaints, then massive bursts of attention and awareness will rarely have a negative impact on sales.
The million-dollar question is whether deliberately provoking ad complaints can be a successful marketing strategy and benefit the reputation of the ad’s subject, long term. I submit that it can only be so with careful strategic positioning.
In the pre-internet days, we all consumed the same material and then weighed in on it. But we’re no longer in it together, and the truth cannot reach everybody. So, where it was once possible to become a lightning rod for outrage in a way that conveyed fearless trailblazing, youthful rebellion or unshakeable principles, we are now fragmented in so many ways that, just as it is futile to try to please everyone, it is now virtually impossible to create outrage with substance.
Moreover, the dust is kicked up by hubristic, two-dimensional agencies that’ll do anything for the money but are blind to cultural references outside their own ghetto. If you spend too long in a bubble, you don’t know how people outside it think, and it’s nigh-on impossible to anticipate every possible short- and long-term reaction to a campaign. To compound things, the crowd never reads past the headline.
Thus, those who claim to understand the rules of engagement, freely pour petrol on the fire. Sometimes this brings short-term benefits, but the inevitable cost is control of the cultural narrative. So, when the platform is burning, and you’ve forgotten to fill the water pistol, you are stuffed; especially when the narrative is driven by the majority who wade in not understanding the idea that has got them outraged in the first place. In those instances, it pays to have a cool head to clean up the mess or stop the wrong things being done really well.
Emma Raducanu ‘in talks with luxury jewellery brand Tiffany & Co’
Evening Standard
Emma Raducanu is rumoured to be in talks with jewellery brand Tiffany & Co to become the high-end brand’s new ambassador.
Rumours of a potential deal began over the weekend after the 18-year-old from Bromley was seen wearing various pieces of the brand’s jewellery during her victorious US Open final.
The tennis champion stunned the world by winning the US Open on Saturday, beating Canadian Leylah Fernandez, 19, in straight sets.
She wore a set of £4,500 pearl and diamond earrings during the match, a white gold £3,275 ring and a £2,750 cross pendant. Ms Raducanu also wore a £17,100 diamond hinged bangle.
The star also wore jewellery by the brand when attending Monday night’s Met Gala alongside Jennifer Lopez, Billie Eilish and Kristen Stewart at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Ms Raducanu is also being linked with Chanel after she wore the French fashion house to the exclusive party.
Already the tennis player has a sponsorship deal with Nike and it is likely she will have received a bonus following her US Open win.
The details of her deals are likely to remain private. She is being managed by Max Eisenbud, vice-president at IMG sports management group, who was behind Maria Sharapova’s reported £200 million career.
Experts have predicted Ms Raducanu – who only sat her A-Levels this summer – could be Britain’s first billion-dollar sports star.
The PR guru Mark Borkowski, who has worked with Michael Jackson, Joan Rivers and Led Zeppelin said: “This is the start of something epic. She is a billion-dollar girl, no doubt about it.
“She is the real deal. It’s not just that she plays extraordinary tennis, it’s also her background, her ethnicity, her freedom of spirit. People also love the fact that she is vulnerable, but laughs the pressures away.”
The money-savvy teen – who achieved an A in A-Level economics this year – comes from a financial background. Both her Chinese mother and Romanian father work in finance.
And, according to The Times, she registered Harbour 6 Limited – which is said to be the vehicle to manage her finances – when she was just 17.
On Tuesday, Raducanu ticked off another of her bucket list visits during her stay in New York.
Raducanu – who made history by becoming the first qualifier to win the US Open on Saturday – was pictured talking to trading floor staff during her tour of the New York Stock Exchange.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/emma-raducanu-tiffany-co-brand-ambassador-b955467.html
Emma Raducanu can be a ‘$1 billion girl’ after US Open win
New York Post
Emma Raducanu’s future looks very bright.
The 18-year-old tennis sensation is on cloud nine after her historic US Open victory on Saturday night, when she beat fellow teenager Leylah Fernandez, 6-4, 6-3, to bring home Britain’s first women’s Grand Slam singles championship in 44 years.
Raducanu, who earned $2.5 million in prize money, never dropped a set throughout her 2021 US Open run — 10 matches, including three qualifying matches — and stole the hearts of fans everywhere. After her grand slam win, publicist to the stars Mark Borkowski tweeted, “And so the journey begins for the billion dollar girl.”
In a separate interview, he explained why the young talent will be a magnet for brands.
“Potentially, I see her as a billion dollar girl,” Borkowski told The Sun. “She’s everything that is really positive about the new icons that this age has got to throw up. In the conflicting culture wars, here we have someone who is young, incredibly talented, has a multicultural background.
“Everything about her is what every brand would like to get their hands on right now. Everyone will want a piece of her. Tough times ahead.”
Borkowski went on to compliment how Raducanu has handled herself throughout various public events — including her withdrawal from Wimbledon in July when she suffered breathing issues while down 6-4, 3-0 to Croatian-Australian star Ajla Tomljanovic.
“In terms of coming out of a pandemic, the way she handled the Wimbledon incident, the way she’s come back, the way she tackles interviews, the way the crowd responds to her, the way she plays the game … if she is as good as the form suggests the sky is the limit,” Borkowski said.
“You get a sense with Emma that she’s got a really powerful personality to go along with the talent.”
Raducanu’s whirlwind summer of success has made her one of tennis’ most-watched stars. She’s climbed the ranks from No. 336 in the world, to 150. Over the summer, her social media presence has reportedly doubled, with her Instagram follower count at 1.6 million and counting.
Just a few weeks before she stunned the tennis crowd in Flushing Meadows, Raducanu had finished her high school A-Level results. According to ESPN, she received an A grade in both math and economics.
In the days leading up to her US Open championship, Raducanu was featured in British Vogue. She posed with her tennis racket in a fashionably sporty photoshoot, and in an accompanying interview, described herself as “the quiet one.” On the night before her Vogue shoot, Raducanu attended her high school prom in Orpington.
And to think, Raducanu’s initial goal was to advance in the US Open, so she could replace a lost pair of AirPods.
https://nypost.com/2021/09/13/emma-raducanu-could-be-a-billion-dollar-girl-after-tennis-fame/
Raducanu set for global media stardom, say UK marketing experts
The Guardian
Emma Raducanu’s fairytale run to the US Open final has put her on track to become the hottest property in British sport, according to brand and sponsorship experts.
The 18-year-old, who swept aside her semi-final opponent, Maria Sakkari, in straight sets, will be the first British woman to reach a grand slam final for 44 years when she competes for the US Open title on Saturday night. For that victory she has made $1.2m (£864,000), four times her career earnings to date, and if she can triumph in the final her pay day will hit $2.5m. But that will just be the beginning.
Making it to the last 16 at Wimbledon on her grand slam debut confirmed her as the next British tennis talent but a win at the US Open would make her a global media star and a magnet for multimillion-pound sponsorship and advertising deals.
Tim Crow, a sports marketing consultant who advised Coca-Cola on football sponsorship for two decades, said: “I haven’t had this many calls from clients, major brands, who are interested in her since Lewis Hamilton broke through in Formula One. If she wins she will become one of the hottest properties in British sport, if not the hottest.”
Crow said Raducanu’s combination of youth, sporting prowess, charismatic personality and international appeal – she was born in Canada to parents from Romania and China and is a product of the British tennis system – makes her commercial gold for brands. She has a shoe and clothing contract with Nike and racquet sponsorship with Wilson.
“As far as brand appeal is concerned I think you can draw parallels with Naomi Osaka [born in Japan to a Haitian father and Japanese mother and raised in the US],” said Crow. “Because of the multicultural aspect of her heritage she is able to resonate in so many markets. She is a world citizen: she appeals so far beyond a typical white, British, middle-class female tennis player.”
Osaka is the world’s highest-paid female athlete and has total earnings of $37.4m (£27.2m), according to Forbes, and has a total of 15 corporate sponsors.
Raducanu’s earnings potential is also enhanced by the fact that she is excelling at tennis, one of the few truly global sports with the biggest endorsement deals and prize money for women, which Crow says “makes it the best sport for a woman for marketability and market potential”. The nine highest paid female athletes in the world are tennis players, according to Forbes.
Experts agree, however, that for her to become a long-term earner at top level she needs continued success.
“In order for her to really achieve the potential she has, she needs to be successful on a consistent basis,” said Neil Hopkins, global head of strategy at M&C Saatchi Sports and Entertainment.
He said the sheer brilliance she had displayed so far would interest sponsors, particularly in the UK. Tf she wins the US Open, she will be thrust into the top echelon of female players, he said.
“[Raducanu] has gone straight in at the top of tennis. You’re going to have sponsors looking at her for the potential she has. And there’s no limit to the type of organisation that could be looking at her,” said Hopkins.
“If she wins [the US Open], her earning potential will get a real boost. When we look at potential athletes for our clients to sponsor, she wouldn’t have been in the conversation a year ago, but she will feature now in lots of conversations.”
Matt Gentry, long-term agent and co-founder of Andy Murray’s agency 77 Sports Management, said she had broad global appeal and if she had continued success there was huge potential. But, he said, “given her age, it’s about being careful and considered, rather than burdening her with lots of brand partners over the next 12 months”.
Gentry said: “It’s about working with companies that, maybe she likes, or in areas she feels passionately about. Not necessarily taking the most money, the marketing investment from big brands is also important. So there are lots of considerations as to who she partners with.
“It should be tennis development first and foremost, and a slow longer-term focus on brand building.”
Financial services, consumer goods and fashion would all be interested, Gentry said. “It’s sky high in terms of potential for her, and not just in the UK. There will be many global companies keen to be part of her journey.”
Raducanu set for global media stardom, say UK marketing experts | Emma Raducanu | The Guardian
Meghan Markle and Harry’s Netflix plan will be ‘hard to stomach’ for Royal Family
The Express
Meghan and Harry’s first Netflix series was announced earlier this year, marking a major step in their pursuit of independence in their new life away from royal duties. The programme – which is called Heart Of Invictus – will be produced by Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Productions company and follow competitors as they prepare for the 2022 games. Harry remains passionate about the Invictus Games which he established in 2013 after witnessing the US’s similar Warrior Games for veterans with physical and mental disabilities.
As part of their deal with Netflix, the couple plan to make documentaries, docu-series, feature films, scripted shows and children’s programming.
But a PR agent warned in September 2020, when the deal had just been announced, that the Sussexes’ new venture could be hard to stomach for the Royal Family.
Mark Borkowski told The Sun: “Viewers will be interested to see what they are up to but there needs to be authenticity.
“They have laid out a grand plan and are fulfilling it. They are doing this all on their own terms.
“Their determination to have their voice heard sustains them.”
He added: “The big hits on Netflix are ones based in reality so it makes sense.
“But this is something the Royal Family will find hard to stomach.”
Netflix said in a statement at the time “The couple already have several projects in development, including an innovative nature docu-series and an animated series that celebrates inspiring women.
“But we are not disclosing any of the programming slate at this time.”
Meghan’s animated series – titled “Pearl” – is already in the works.
Archewell Productions, the company formed by Harry and Meghan, said in a statement that the programme will centre on the adventures of a 12-year-old girl who is inspired by a variety of influential women from history.
The series will be produced by Meghan, and she said in a statement that she is “thrilled that Archewell Productions…will bring you this new animated series, which celebrates extraordinary women throughout history.”
Upon the announcement of the Netflix deal last September, a source close to Meghan also said the Duchess wants the world to see the “real her”.
They added: “Much of the docu-series will be about their philanthropy rather than what they get up to behind closed doors.
“But it will still be a fascinating insight and Meghan hopes viewers will get to see the real her.”
But the agreement with the streaming giant was also met with criticism from some quarters, as royal author Ingrid Seward argued it contradicted their wishes for privacy.
She said: “We were told they had gone to California for greater privacy so it all appears rather hypocritical.
“It is extraordinary. This is exactly what they said they wouldn’t do.
“The more they talk about themselves the more people will want them to do just that and won’t be interested in anything else they have to offer.”
What’s next for Prince Andrew?
CBC News
Duke of York has repeatedly denied sexual assault allegation at heart of lawsuit recently launched against him
The civil suit launched a few days ago against Prince Andrew may be new, but the allegations at its core — that he sexually assaulted one of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime accusers when she was 17 — are not.
And there is nothing new in how Queen Elizabeth’s second son, who has repeatedly denied the allegations, has responded to the latest legal situation: with public silence.
That’s not to say there’s been silence around the suit filed by lawyers for Virginia Giuffre in Manhattan federal court.
“It has caused a media storm, as would be predictable,” said Judith Rowbotham, a social and cultural scholar and visiting professor at the University of Plymouth in southwestern England, via email.
Rowbotham said it is highly unlikely that the suit came as a surprise to either Andrew or the Royal Family.
The official line, she said, is that this is a personal matter for Andrew, and not something for the Royal Family to handle in an institutional sense.
“He has his own team of legal advisers and there is no suggestion of any involvement from the Royal Household’s legal retainers, further underlining that it is being handled as a purely private and personal matter for the prince.”
Andrew stepped back from official royal duties in the aftermath of his disastrous BBC interview in November 2019 about his friendship with Epstein.
The spectre of that interview, which was excoriated for its arrogance and Andrew’s seemingly tone-deaf focus on himself, as well as the lack of empathy he showed for Epstein’s victims, has hung over him ever since.
“If he hadn’t done the interview, there would have been a lot of noise, [but] it would be more difficult … to keep the narrative going,” British PR expert Mark Borkowski said in an interview.
While Andrew may have stepped back, there has also been a sense he may be interested in resuming a more public role. At the time of the death of his father, Prince Philip, in April, he spoke to the media — a move that in particular sparked speculation he might be eyeing a return.
But in the eyes of many observers, such a return is unlikely. Borkowski considers chances of it happening “very slim, microscopic.”
“It’s a story that is not going to go away. Any time he raises his head above the parapet … it’s not a good look. And the tactic he deployed to supposedly draw a line over this has done anything but that.”
Andrew’s circumstances are hardly the first time a member of the Royal Family has been caught up in high-profile legal matters over the centuries.
The real question here, suggested Rowbotham, “is not whether or not Prince Andrew is guilty of something, but rather, how will public opinion view not only him, but also the wider Royal Family, as a result of the outcome — whatever it is — of the suit brought against him.”
Looking back in time, she points to the case of George IV and his wife, Caroline of Brunswick. In 1820, he arranged to have her put on trial in the House of Lords for adultery.
“Public opinion was hotly engaged, with most people very firmly on Queen Caroline’s side,” said Rowbotham, who is also a legal and constitutional historian.
Ultimately, George IV didn’t get his divorce, and both the monarch and the government survived.
“At that time, attitudes to the sexual mores of the elite were very different, but the public discerned an unfairness over suing the Queen for adultery when the King had, for years, been an open and flagrant adulterer himself,” said Rowbotham.
Borkowski sees Andrew’s situation as a “recurring scar” for the Royal Family.
“It makes it more difficult for the Royal Family to start rebuilding and projecting positively when we’ve still got these negative stories swirling around.”
Rowbotham said the situation for Andrew, who is now ninth in the line of succession and essentially a minor royal, “is undoubtedly embarrassing and problematic for him, and for his family in the personal sense.”
“But it is honestly difficult to see that it is a threat to the Royal Family as an institution surrounding the monarchy.”
Many minor royals have been caught up in scandal over the years, she said, noting, for example, a previous Prince George of Cambridge in the 1800s. (This George had illegitimate children, mistresses and a mixed reputation regarding his time in the military.)
“While the family — with a lowercase F — may be affected [by Andrew’s situation], the Royal Family will be in the long term not significantly affected,” said Rowbotham.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/prince-andrew-civil-suit-environment-butterflies-titles-1.6140055