Anatomy of a PR Suicide, Part 3
These were Harry’s headlines in August 2015-August 2015.
I collected these by simply running Google searches for each month during the time period (”prince harry january 2016″ and so on) and pulling up the most popular headlines that came up. They’re not necessarily in order (sometimes I’d get the same headline five times and I would just skip until I hit a new one), but they’re close. Not scientific, but it’ll do.
This gives us a decent-ish look at Harry’s pre-Markle pr--lots of work, lots of conservation, lots of tours, and a few articles bemoaning the lack of privacy. This was who we thought he was.
There were a few surprises there. The actual Orlando Invictus Games were not as high up the search results as I would have expected, for example. Go figure. Overall, however, this was kind of how I remembered the year.
There were some hiccups--he missed Charlotte’s christening, had Ellie Goulding/Juliette LaBelle canoodling, Margot Robbie spoke up, and he got criticized for hunting--but overall the headlines were fantastic. He looked serious (all those Obama and Mandela meets!) and hard-working.
Here are Harry’s headlines from August 2016-August 2017.
There were more surprises here. That stupid August 4 engagement date? It was getting hyped back in March and was at the top of the search results. I don’t think I even noticed that. I was wondering why everyone got engagement fever this month. Turns out Meghan’s press has been hyping the August 4 proposal since last Spring.
The actual photo-ops with Markle were not as high up the search results as I would have expected. The Jamaica and polo pics were the only ones to bubble up through the search results. The Middleton wedding? Invisible in Harry’s search results even though it was Meghan’s top Google Trends event.
Also, his work was pretty much invisible, which surprised me. I would’ve expected the romance to bring some additional attention to his work. The opposite was true. The post-Caribbean-Tour detour visit (as well as the honeymoon offer by the Grenadine PM) totally overshadowed the tour. The only work events to bubble up through the Markle maelstrom were the Epping Forest visit, the garden party, and a rugby practice he attended.
Sentenbale got some good headlines in 2015-2016. You’d think they would get even better headlines in 2017, what with the big “kiss” publicity stunt happening during a Sentenbale polo match, right? Nope. Didn’t happen.
He also had some weird Markle headlines in his results. “Makes her Mark on the Fashion World”? Why is that ranked so high in Harry’s results? They must have put serious money behind it.
And that “while still dating celebrity chef” article also surprised me. I thought only the insiders were aware of that. Nope. It’s one of the top November results.
Still, the point is that he went from headlines about the military, his tours, and his charity and conservation work to headlines about infidelity, paternity rumors, attacking the press, and pulling rank.
The funny thing is that this has been a fully orchestrated pr drive. This was all done on purpose! I guess the expected to have “Harry Dates Stunning Humanitarian Actress And Future Nobel Prize Winner” headlines. That is not what happened. AT ALL.
Most of this headlines are either positive or neutral, and, yes, they all still make him look like an idiot. If you compare them to the headlines he was getting last year, you get the feeling he went through some weird “Flowers for Algernon”-style regression, from working with Michelle Obama and meeting Mandela’s window to “making a mark on the fashion world.”
And not because Meghan is “unsuitable,” or the tabs are out to get him, or anything like that. All the headlines are stuff he has done, or stuff he has allowed her pr to say he has done--stuff like the statement, the post-tour detour, the “jetting off,” and using his security detail to pick her up at the airport.
This is 100% self-inflicted, an own goal of the highest order.
I pulled the trigger on this project this month, because I expected Invictus to be a huge boost of positive pr for him and I wanted to get a good look at situation before that promo wave hit. However, judging from the 2016 results, IG is not the promo nuke that I expected it to be. I don’t think it will be enough to chance the conversation.
