Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s four-day tour of Australia aimed to warm the country to their version of royalty, but just weeks later, Newsweek can reveal signs the publicity appears to have had the opposite effect.
Data collected by Newsweek using the digital intelligence platform Similarweb show that website traffic for Meghan’s lifestyle brand, As Ever, dropped both globally and in Australia in April, the same month they embarked on a tour of Sydney and Melbourne.
Meanwhile, Harry also suffered a setback when Australia’s federal government cut A$9 million (around $6.5 million) funding commitment to Invictus Australia, the local charitable arm of his Invictus Games tournament for injured veterans.
Why It Matters
That is significant because one potential benefit of the visit was an opportunity to promote the couple ahead of As Ever’s global expansion, which Meghan has said is coming down the track.
Meghan sells jams, honey, candles, wine, and other products through her As Ever online shop and currently ships only to the United States, but going global could significantly expand her audience.
As Ever’s Web Traffic Falls
Data from SimilarWeb, accessed by Newsweek, appears to indicate why Meghan wants to go global: Americans made up just 35 percent of her traffic in April, meaning the other 65 percent of visitors would likely have left empty-handed unless they had an American friend to purchase for them.
Other visitors come primarily from Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia despite the fact that she does not currently ship there. Had Meghan’s Australia visit caused a surge in audience on her As Ever website, that would have set out a clear business case for launching Down Under.
The fact that her Australian audience was down at the exact moment she was on the ground, smiling and shaking hands with Aussies in Melbourne and Sydney, poses questions about whether the news coverage generated by the trip will actually translate into sales once her store launches.
Meghan’s website had 178,143 total visitors in April, a 20 percent drop from March, when she had 226,330 visits. The Australian share also dipped from 6.42 percent to 6.28 percent. That works out at around 11,200 Australian visits in April compared to around 14,500 the month before.
Both months, though, were down on February when Australians made up 9.04 percent of 213,030 total visits, giving her around 19,300 Australian visits. Meghan and Harry’s spokesperson announced the tour in early March, meaning Aussie visits to As Ever dipped during both the March build-up and the April tour.
From February, before the tour was announced, to April, when it took place, there was a 42 percent slump in her Australian audience from around 19,300 visits to 11,200. The curve, in other words, has been heading in the wrong direction for a duchess preparing to expand her business abroad, and the visit did nothing to turn the tide.
Bronte Coy, a royal and entertainment reporter at News.com.au, told Newsweek: “Meghan spoke on a podcast, I think it was last year, talking about global expansion. Where else is she looking other than these places? So in that way, obviously, Australia’s proven that it’s not panned out how they would have hoped.”
“I would say that promotional blitz has absolutely fallen flat,” Coy said.
Coy added, though, that the Sussexes did have another major goal behind the tour: to demonstrate they could be “half in, half out” royals, operating in a fashion similar to Harry’s father and brother while still making money in the private sector.
“That worked in terms of being able to get paid speaking gigs and to do charity engagements,” she said. “But what’s the point of all of this if it’s not to launch commercial arms that are going to pay for it? How much longer are people going to pay them to speak at things if they don’t have relevance and companies that are thriving and empires, etc?”
Australia Cuts Funding to Invictus Charity
The Australian government is cutting funding to Invictus Australia, it was announced this week, in a move that has taken the charity by surprise.
Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government gave A$9 million over three years, earmarked in the 2022-2023 budget, and the charity had been hoping the funding commitment would be renewed in the coming budget. That, however, did not come to pass.
Michael Hartung, chief executive of Invictus Australia, told Australia’s 9 News: “Given we had such short notice, only minutes before the budget announcement went live, we were deeply shocked and disappointed by the decision.”
The decision is a blow and comes just weeks after Harry and Meghan visited the Australian Invictus team in Sydney, taking part in a sailing event in the city’s harbor where they were escorted by Hartung.
Vanessa Broughill, an Invictus Games athlete, told Australia’s ABC Sport: “It can be life-threatening if I’m going to be brutally honest. We lose six veterans a month to suicide and a lot of the time that can be taken back to the fact that they feel like they have no support.”
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