I’m a big fan of trendspotting, or gossip pattern-recognition. In recent weeks, there’s been a big push for several royal narratives: Prince William is still incandescent with rage over the Sussexes; Prince Harry just wants to move back to the UK; and the Duchess of Sussex is a professional flop. Is it possible that royal commentators are just cycling through their favorite tropes during the summer silly season? Sure. Does it also feel like there’s a concerted effort to push these specific narratives all at the same time? Also yes. Well, the haters are still trying to make “Meghan is the reason why Cookie Queens hasn’t had a billion-dollar box office” into a thing. It’s not a thing. Cookie Queens is doing pretty well at the box office considering it’s a small documentary and 99% of documentaries don’t even make $1 million during theatrical runs. It’s not even about the money either – Cookie Queens is well-reviewed and well-received, and it’s just lovely to see Girl Scouts represented on-screen. But the Daily Mail devoted yet another piece to what Meghan needs to do in the wake of Cookie Queens.

If the Duchess of Sussex wants to win over Hollywood, she must show earnest ‘vulnerability’ and stray away from ‘practised and managed’ content, a branding expert has claimed. Despite being one of the most famous women in the world, a Netflix lifestyle show in her roster, a start on an successful legal drama – and even an Emmy nomination – Meghan’s latest on-screen project, a documentary about Girl Scout cookies, received a half-baked reception.

From unimpressed critics saying Cookie Queens was ‘staged as it is sweet’ – while a Variety reviewer found it to be ‘too much of a reality-show ramble’ – the film, made by Archewell Productions, reportedly generated just £500 per cinema screening.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, PR professional Rebecca May said that ‘Meghan doesn’t have a visibility problem… but she does have a perception problem.’

Inevitably embroiled in memories of ‘Megxit’ and her husband Prince Harry’s ‘feud’ with the King and Prince of Wales, it’s ‘affected her brand’ in the industry.

‘If you are trying to build something wholesome, warm and aspirational, but there is still so much noise and division around your personal brand, it is difficult for people to separate the two,’ Rebecca explained. ‘Hollywood is used to dealing with high-profile personalities, but there comes a point where too much noise around someone becomes a brand risk. You don’t want the person attached to a project constantly becoming a bigger story than the project itself. This can run the risk of the person becoming the story and the project losing control of its own narrative.’

While the Duchess isn’t expected to share everything, the expert said ‘controlling the narrative too tightly can work against her’.

‘I don’t think it is necessarily just an authenticity issue either. Meghan could have very real reasons that we don’t publicly know about for the estrangement from her father, for instance,’ Rebecca added. ‘But from a reputation point of view, it has become an elephant in the room. There needs to be some vulnerability and something that feels less practised and managed. You can still protect your privacy without everything feeling so controlled. From a brand and PR perspective, the difficulty today is converting the huge level of interest in her and her life into genuine interest in the projects she is trying to build. That, for me, is why Hollywood has been difficult to crack. The person continually risks becoming bigger than the product itself, and the project simply gets overshadowed.’

[From The Daily Mail]

This is a lot of doublespeak and white noise presented as patronizing “advice.” Meghan needs to be relatable and not controlled, but her horrible father, but the left-behinds, but there’s so much interest in her! This woman just put a bunch of deranger talking points in a blender and poured out the concoction on the pages of a British tabloid. Whenever these people cry about Meghan’s brand management, I think about how consistently the left-behinds try to attach themselves to Meghan’s star power, to this very day. They are still riding that high of being attached to someone so charismatic and popular. They still spend weeks, sometimes months, analyzing and crying about Meghan’s Instagram or Meghan’s appearances at various events. A whole-ass king tries to demand that Meghan avoid posting on social media during certain events, that’s how obsessed they are.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images, Meghan’s Instagram and As Ever’s Instagram.