You know what it’s like when you get engaged and your family start showing you up. First, your sister goes around telling everyone how you always wanted to get your claws into your new husband, then she starts threatening to reveal some embarrassing secrets about your childhood. Next, she has a go about how much you are spending on your wedding – pointing out your dad needs a few quid. And before the wedding your dad goes and puts a load of embarrassing pictures on Facebook.
The scenario would be difficult to manage for anyone but imagine if your new family just happens to be the British royals and those spats are being played out in front of millions of people world-wide. At least you can rely on a slick PR team to manage things for you – right?
Wrong – the reputation management side of the ‘markle debacle’ has been non-existent.
As a new royal, Meghan and her friends and family will have been thoroughly researched and the vengeful sister and eccentric dad would have set a few red flags flying. A crisis management plan should have been put into place from the beginning and Meghan and Harry in particular, should have been briefed about how to handle her family.
The public don’t really know how to take Thomas Markle – is he a money chasing, estranged dad or is he a confused and hurt dad who wants a relationship with his daughter? There is going to come a time when the public start to believe the latter – Meghan’s popularity can easily be lost overnight if they start to see her as a cold-hearted bitch who just wants to air brush her previous family out of her life.
The royal PR team are really good at their own PR – aren’t we great, look what a good job we do – but actually, when things get difficult for any royal – they are not as good as they like to think. The Markle problem won’t go away – it is just going to get worse.
Everyone is wondering why Meghan and Harry haven’t just got on a plane and gone to see Thomas Markle – or had him flown to the UK. A few nice pics of dad and daughter will go a long way to keeping the public on side.
The Monarchy has remained popular because it has avoided looking like some cheap reality show. The ongoing crisis is starting to look like one called ‘The Markles’.
Sort it out.