New Royal baby: the answer to newsbrands’ summer?
Raymond Snoddy takes a look at the effect the arrival of the Royal baby has had on the Royal brand, and asks whether the hype around the new addition will affect newsbrands in the long run…
If the monarchy was worth £44.5 billion last week, what it is worth now? Surely the new prince must add at least another £1 billion to the Royal brand, though whether his contribution is mainly as an intangible asset is less clear.
What is undeniable is that in any corporate enterprise, certainty and a clear line of succession are highly valued. Many chief executives are criticised for their lack of succession planning and the share price of their company is marked down as a result.
With the Royal brand, the timeline now extends deep into the next century – Charles, William and now the new prince who became a media star aged one day thanks to ‘His First Royal Wave’. He has even made Prince Charles, the Royal Grandfather, look good.
Putting a sale value on the monarchy is, of course, little more than a publicity stunt for the Royal Jubilee year. The pictures and the properties do have a real value. But if there is any sense in ‘the intangibles’ – the £26.4 billion that the monarchy is estimated to contribute to the UK economy – then the role of the media to that process is vital.
Usually the media, particularly the newspapers, are cast as villains in the Royal soap opera. In fact, they should be treasured for helping to create and spread the Royal myth around the world. A silent Palace might have more mystery and allure but you can be certain it wouldn’t be worth anything like £26.4 billion on the side and help to attract tourists to the UK.
You can see that instinctively the unknown strategists who have helped to modernise ‘the firm’ in recent years, are very aware of this.
Cue the perfect photo opportunity for the consciously informal happy couple and their offspring outside the hospital. Already the pundits are ringing their hands about how to protect the infant’s privacy.
There is another way of looking at it. This is brand renewal on an enormous scale and the Royal Family and their intangible assets will clearly benefit greatly as a result. Somehow that imperative will have to be balanced against the need to try to give the young prince as normal a childhood as possible.
The deal between the Palace and the media that protected the privacy of Princes William and Harry when they were growing up, worked rather well on the whole.
But that was then.
It was a deal struck in a pre-iPhone, pre-Twitter and Facebook age and the past cannot be revisited. News black-outs are now almost impossible to police. This new prince will inevitably lead his life in a much public world unless his parents intend to keep him indoors with curtains drawn for the rest of his life.
Internet pictures will go around the world in a flash. Will the professional British media be the only ones unable to carry them? The issue will provide an early dilemma for the Independent Press Standards Organisation when it is set up, hopefully as soon as possible.
While the media clearly plays a major part in helping to maintain a continuing sense of relevance for an institution that would otherwise be an anachronism – the media in turn benefits from the relationship.
Like it or not, a new British Royal baby – and even for days the lack of a Royal baby – is just news, worldwide.
We know already that word of the Royal birth gave a huge boost to newspaper websites, giving Mail Online its best ever day with 10.57 million unique users. Total traffic to UK newspaper websites was up by nearly 50 per cent and unique visitors to the UK’s news and media online sites reached a total of 94 million on the day.
The slight problem is that the obvious success of online and desire for breaking news may actually satisfy much of the public curiosity that has built over the story. The wrap-around covers, however stylish and imaginative, may only move the dial on newspaper sales to a modest degree.
A Monday birth and a Tuesday unveiling unfortunately leaves thin pickings for the Sundays.
It has, however, been a remarkable couple of months of happy stories for the papers – not just procreation which had its predictable progression, but sport and the weather.
A summer coming close to rivalling that of 1976 just after the weather scientists had predicted 10 years of wet and miserable summers was an unexpected bonus.
On the sporting field there was something for everyone; Andy Murray and Wimbledon were a long time coming together but we are now guaranteed years of single-handed combat three or four times a year between Murray and Djokovic. In rugby the British Lions warmed things up admirably for the arrival of the Australian cricket team.
As the Royal baby disappears into the nursery for a while, the Ashes should keep even those who are not cricket fans amused until at least Sunday 25th of August.
There is something about the Australians that bring out the worst in the British, which means that only a 5-0 whitewash will do.
The combination of compelling events under a warm sun should provide a welcome boost to year-on-year newspaper sales. If you can’t sell some more papers with raw material like that then the problems facing the industry are deeper than we feared.
If the extra traffic all flows to online then it could provide further evidence that, but for a handful of the most successful publishers, charging for some form of online content may become all but inevitable.
The only thing missing at the moment is a bit of bad news. We are talking disappointment here, not catastrophic events. Only the most hard-bitten of news editors long for the arrival of tragedies during the summer holidays.
Luckily there is a potential serious disappointment lurking on the horizon. What if the England football team were to fail to qualify for next year’s World Cup in Brazil?
That would wipe off most of the smiles created by the sunshine, tennis, rugby, cricket and the Royal birth in an instant. It might even sell more papers.
This autumn MediaTel will be hosting its seventh annual newspaper event – The Future of National Newspapers – in recognition of an ever-changing industry that affects each and every one of us. Tickets are available on the events site.