She recently launched her lifestyle brand with 50 jars of strawberry jam. Now Meghan is hoping that a British PR who once worked for Haribo can make her personal brand taste just as sweet.
Earlier this week, Meghan and Harry’s company, Archewell Foundation, hired Charlie Gipson as its new director of communications. Gipson, who has previously worked for brands such as Mars, Cadbury and Domino’s, will serve as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s main point of contact for all UK and European media.
It’s the first time Meghan, 42, and Harry, 39, have hired a permanent member of staff who is based in the UK since 2020’s ’ Megxit’, and it could indicate more time spent back on this side of the pond for the Sussex family. But turning Meghan’s reputation around here will be quite some task.
Mark Borkowski, the crisis PR consultant, says he’s not surprised that the Duchess has taken on an expert in consumer products to help “sell her wares like jam”, but thinks that rebranding Meghan to appeal to British audiences is “one of the most difficult jobs in PR…. second only perhaps to doing PR for Prince Andrew”. Yikes.
Gipson, 41, from southwest London, has scrubbed much of his personal history from the Internet in recent weeks, including his social media profiles. But he describes himself as a “senior PR & Events specialist with over 15 years experience in consumer comms”.
He worked as an associate client director at the PR behemoth Edelman for three years, as well as roles at smaller firms such as Light Brigade (which is now defunct) and Splendid Communications (whose clients include Durex and Ginsters).
He wrote on his now-deleted LinkedIn profile that he had launched “delicious new treats for Mars”, covered Crufts with Pedigree and once dressed up as Pudsey the Bear for Children In Need, when he was “chauffeured around the BBC TV studios by Matt Baker in a rickshaw”.
Hiring a new spokesperson in the UK is all part of Team Sussex’s global rebrand, aka “Heghan 2.0”. In February, they relaunched their Web site and in March, the Duchess announced the launch of her long-rumored lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard, with a sepia-tinted video on Instagram.
In recent weeks she has been filming a cooking show for Netflix, and has signed a new podcast deal with Lemonada Media, whose mission is to “‘make life suck less”.
Harry and Meghan certainly need a fresh start, having been dumped by Spotify, criticized for their Netflix documentary and languishing in public opinion polls. Numerous employees of the Duke and Duchess quit, amid a flurry of NDAs and allegations of bullying palace staff during her brief time as a working royal (allegations she denied). In January, an Ipsos Mori poll found that only 18 percent of people had a positive opinion of Meghan, her lowest rating in five years.
So what would the PR industry experts advise Meghan to do next?
“If you air your dirty laundry in public, it will take time for it to dry.”
—Natalie Trice, a PR consultant who has worked with clients including CNN, Sense and James Cameron (and author of the book PR School: Your Time To Shine)
Meghan needs to be consistent if she wants to rebrand herself in the UK. Up until now she’s had a very scatterbrained approach to her output, jumping from a kids’ book, to a podcast, to a lifestyle brand and so on. It doesn’t seem very joined up.
There’s also no consistency in how they want to present themselves as a couple. Are they royals or are they not? Do they want to be in the public eye or do they want privacy? People respond to a consistent narrative so a more joined-up approach on who she is and what her goals are will be the first job.
I don’t know who’s been advising them up until now, but their strategy seems so all over the place that I wonder if they’ve been listening to the advice they’ve been getting. A lot of the stories around them have been very toxic and negative.
It’s not just the ‘us vs them’ dynamic that they’ve set up with the Royal family, but also the scraps that have played out with Meghan’s own family and the bullying accusations by some of her staff (palace aide Samantha Cohen recently confirmed that she was questioned by the palace about the allegations). There’s a lot to unpick and correct and that takes honesty and guts and patience. If you air your dirty laundry in public, it will take time for it to dry.
There’s plenty of rebuilding for them to do, but when you think back to the time of their wedding there was a lot of positive feeling for Meghan in the UK and I think they could harness that again.
She should focus her energy on using her platform and the way she’s overcome her own negative experiences to help other women. We saw a bit of that with the work she did with the Smart Works charity and an animal rescue home she opened in the UK recently, but it needs to go beyond just paying lip service to these causes.
She needs to be seen getting out there, putting the time in and campaigning for issues that matter to her. There also needs to be a strong, cohesive, simple message. Look at how Michelle Obama carved out a role for herself empowering young women through education.
Meghan has a voice and a platform, what does she want to use it to say? Who is she and what does she really stand for? I don’t think anyone knows yet. And hopefully it’s more than flogging strawberry jam to rich people.
“We need to see a real person behind all the gossip and the headlines.”
—Mark Borkowski, crisis PR consultant and the author of the book The Fame Formula
I think we need to see some humility from Meghan. She’ll need to really surprise people if she wants to win them over. She should be led by the examples of some of the people she fell out with in the Royal family, such as Princess Anne and Sophie Wessex.
They have been able to have a profound influence by working hard, under the radar, for the causes they believe in. Sometimes less is more. Meghan seems to be more about the explosion of flashbulbs and grandstanding than she is about the soft and gentle touch. If I was advising her, I’d tell her to do some charity work undercover, then she’d surprise people if the things she was involved in turned out to be a great success.
She needs to build up relationships with key players in the philanthropic arena, not just lean on celebrity friends like Oprah. I’d like to see her build bridges with some of her biggest critics.
She’s not going to turn around the naysayers overnight, but she can demonstrate that all the words lead to good actions and good tasks. Ultimately, I think people are forgiving and Brits love humility, but Meghan and Harry won’t get far if they carry on peddling their own soft-focus, uncritical, highly controlled narrative.
She’s hired Charlie Gipson, who comes from a very big corporate PR background, to counter a lot of the negativity around her. He’ll be like a soldier of defense going into battle with the British press and the anti-Meghan rhetoric. But her first mistake is that the hiring of him has become a news story.
As a PR, once you’re the story, 50 percent of your power is gone. Now Gipson has to prove to the media that he’s going to be able to deliver, both to them and to her. Look at someone like Paddy Harveson, who worked for Charles, he was always very much in the shadows. As soon as people can see the strings being pulled, you’re behind.
For a rebrand to work, Meghan has got to totally trust Gipson and believe in him and what he suggests. Some people hire PRs who they just want to be ‘yes men’, but if this new guy is coming in with tough advice, Meghan has got to take it.
I don’t think she should focus on the Invictus Games, that’s very much Harry’s thing and if it looks as if she’s leeching on to that then people won’t like it.
She needs her own separate communications team to make her stand out on her own. We need to see a real person behind all the gossip and the headlines. Will the real Meghan please stand up?
“Dialing down her Hollywood ways would be a great start.”
—Rachel Richardson, a content consultant and writer of the culture newsletter Highly Flammable on Substack
‘Be less American’ would be the first piece of advice I’d give Meghan if she wants to win over the UK. Second would be to find her self-deprecation switch and flip it to on. And third, to let her actions speak louder than her words. Only then do I think she stands a chance of winning back the British public after all that’s happened since 2020.
It would be a tough turnaround, but not impossible for a woman of Meghan’s talents. But she would have to want it, and be motivated enough to adjust. That’s where I have less faith. The rancor runs deep on both sides of the Atlantic and I question whether she would even have the desire to try to reconcile with Brits after her experiences in the UK, but, of course, ambition is a powerful motivator.
Dialing down her Hollywood ways would be a great start. Less word salads and fewer psychobabble references would go far with plain-speaking Brits who rarely use the words ‘heal’ or ‘empower’.
Shaking off her serious manner would also help. The past few years have seen her dwell on the negative experiences of royal life and – rightly or wrongly – some think of her as a moaner. If she could reveal her sense of humor, or even better, engage in some self-deprecation then she could capture the hearts and minds of humble Brits.
Lastly, Meghan would be wise to focus on showing us who she is rather than telling us. In the last few years many of her initiatives have been heavily trailed and she’s spoken at length about her causes. If she prioritised action over narrative building I think she’d be unstoppable and would likely silence many of her critics.
If Meghan could pull off all three then she could make huge strides, but she’s certainly not guaranteed to succeed. If the recent claims from former aide Samantha Cohen blow up then she’ll need more than a few adjustments to rehabilitate her image.
Cohen recently confirmed that she had been interviewed as part of a probe into reports Meghan bullied staff, which has put a spotlight back onto the investigation and its unpublished findings. If the allegations were ultimately found to be true I don’t think even the spin of an industrial PR machine could save her image.
“Meghan was very good at speaking with people—I’d like to see more of that warm, real side of her.”
—Abesi Manyando, author and founder of the public relations and branding development firm Abesi PR
Meghan realized that she needed a UK publicist to ‘read the room’. There was an instant backlash to her launching a lifestyle blog when the UK is having a cost of living crisis and two senior royals have cancer.
The timing wasn’t as sensitive as it could have been. She’ll need to work on that in future.
I think Meghan has a good understanding of social media – her lifestyle brand has gained 600,000 followers very quickly. I’d like to see her be more authentic on it. The food and cooking is something that feels natural for her.
She had a lifestyle blog called The Tig before she met Harry, and rather than such a curated presence I’d like to see more off-the-cuff, relatable content and her speaking directly to her audience with videos.
When she was in the UK, Meghan was very good at speaking with people on the ground and showing empathy and emotion. To really harness her power, she needs to make content that’s not so glossy and edited and considered. I’d like to see more of that warm, real side of her.
That’s how people make a connection to a personal brand and that’s how you can feel relatable even when you have such a high net worth and status. Kim Kardashian is a master of this.
When it comes to her podcast, I’d advise Meghan to champion real people with interesting stories from under-represented backgrounds, rather than just using her celebrity friends.
The fact is, as a woman of color in the public eye, Meghan has faced racism and there are people who won’t accept her no matter what she does. Part of her strategy will need to be filtering out the criticism that’s helpful, and the criticism that’s coming from those who can’t get past her skin color.
Kate Wills is a U.K.-based freelance journalist, author, and broadcaster. She is the author of A Trip of One’s Own
