At the end of the day, I don’t think the end of the Sussexes’ Spotify contract was good news or bad news, it was just news. You know? Archetypes was successful and popular and it would have been great if Spotify had continued to prioritize that podcast, but, on the other side, it was a successful and popular podcast and some other platform will pick it up. I’m hopeful that the Sussexes will find a different platform, just as I’m hopeful that they’ll change their strategy when it comes to their podcasting and producing projects, meaning: work faster and smarter, and reimagine their promotion and social media footprint. It’s pretty wild to watch the British media obsess over the story though, and treat the Spotify move like “the end is nigh” for H&M in America. The Mail got some of their best know-nothing hacks to Britsplain why the Sussexes are in big trouble – as always, you should keep in mind that this is solely for a domestic British audience which is primed to believe the worst of Harry & Meghan.
Spotify’s decision to cut their losses and scrap their deal with Meghan and Harry could cost the couple $10million and does not bode well for their fading hope of becoming a $1billion brand, experts told MailOnline today.
PR guru Mark Borkowski told MailOnline that it is very bad news for Meghan and Harry’s brand and a sign ‘their star is really falling’. He estimated that the failure could cost them up to $10million. He said: ‘They didn’t get the quality of the product right and the gooey front of their new reality faded. The air is going out of their much hyped balloon and these little things begin to erode that juggernaut of hype that they delivered when they broke away from the Royal Family. If no one is interested in anything they have to say about mental health or the Royal Family then their star is really falling. It is not a good day for the long term brand of Meghan and Harry’, he added. Mr Borkowski said that he believes that they could lose up to 40 per cent of the $25million deal after it ended, which would be around $10million.
Brand and culture expert Nick Ede told MailOnline today that Spotify will have pulled the plug and it is a sign that the post-Megxit wave the couple were riding is crashing. He predicts more brands will dump them amid rumours Netflix are also unhappy.
‘It looks like Meghan’s brand isn’t such a box office winner and I can see a lot of other businesses following suit’, he said. Mr Ede said that Meghan’s relauch of her blog, The Tig, is near-certain, as her options become more limited. He believes that the couple will have lost ‘many millions’ from the dead Spotify deal.
Mr Ede said: ‘I think that this is optically a really negative position for Meghan and her brand to be in. With this news, and the news that Netflix are not happy with the output from the Archewell team, either she is set to lose millions from these deals. It also shows that these huge brands have not as much confidence in Meghan and Harry and that the halo effect they were riding on post-Megxit is now beginning to fade. Brands need to make money . They pay for talent not because of emotions but because of economy. I think that Meghan will build her own community and brand like Kourtney Kardashian and Poosh or Gwyneth Paltrow with Goop. So I think The Tig will probably have an audio arm where she can produce and play Archetypes and it will be available on all platforms, not just Spotify’.
[From The Daily Mail]
I’m sure that if you live inside the Deranger bunker and see the Sussexes siloed from every business trend, you probably believe this. I actually think a compelling case could be made that the Sussexes’ brand-management has faltered a bit, and that they should have done more with Spotify and Netflix a lot sooner. That being said, Spotify’s business model absolutely seems to be fluctuating – they lost the Obamas as well, and the Obamas went to Audible and Acast. Which is probably the model for what the Sussexes do next. The elephant in the room of all of the British commentary is that Meghan, in particular, seems to understand that she needed to do more to build her brand as a content-creator and producer, which is why she signed with WME less than two months ago. Despite all of the claims from Salt Island, it’s clear that WME still believes in Brand Sussex, and still believes that there’s money to be made.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
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