A Right Royal Media Frenzy! Or Is It?

Who is jumping on the Royal Wedding bandwagon? And to what lengths will people go to get their slice of the media frenzy?

As the Royal Wedding edges ever closer it seems you cannot open a newspaper or switch on the TV without being bombarded by coverage about the Royal Wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton.

So with this in mind, is everyone jumping on the ‘Royal’ bandwagon to promote their own business?

I fear perhaps not. Unfortunately, and it saddens me to say this, it has been much more difficult to find scandalous abuses of the Royal Wedding’s media obsession than one might imagine. I expected to type in search terms such as ‘The Royal Wedding’ or ‘Will & Kate’ and be bombarded with useless and irrelevant links to websites that had no reference to the wedding at all. However, it seems on closer inspection that most businesses have in fact used the Royal wedding in a rather tasteful way.

Of course, we must pay mention to the latest T-Mobile viral ad. At last count it had 13.5 million views!

This is a particularly excellent and quality example of how to use the Royal Wedding to your benefit. An already well-established marketing tool used by T-Mobile is the viral dance ad. They have simply edited the content to be relevant to the current public obsession.

Kodak has also used the Royal Wedding to their advantage for one of their poster advertisements. A simple play with Kate’s current surname ‘Middleton’ has created a clever and classy advert saying exactly what it needs to whilst indulging ever so slightly in Royal Wedding fever.

If we were to the go on to compare the current Royal Wedding search term trends from Google, concentrating on the last 3 months results, it is clear that certain specific searches have skyrocketed.

There are a minority of companies that appear to be using paid keyword searches, such as ‘Royal Wedding’. Soda Stream created a Royal Wedding flavour, Pimms promote their free street party packs and William Hill have set up their own wedding related games. At one point we found BT Openzone being advertised. Although perhaps one could link the relevance between the wedding and the streaming element of the product, I do feel perhaps it is slightly far-fetched.

As you rummage through Google, it doesn’t appear that many businesses are taking full advantage of the media coverage and boost in Royal Wedding related searches online to advertise their products.

However, as you walk down the high street there are buntings and decorations everywhere. Just yesterday as I walked into an Early Learning Centre there were 2 child size cardboard cut-outs of Will & Kate with a gap for the face, for the children to pretend to be the prince and princess. Individual websites are advertising Royal Wedding items for sale, such as Debenhams’ Union Jack pillow and Royal brooches!

But is that it? – Surely Not! – With all the media frenzy around this once in a lifetime event, I must say I feel disappointed.

So, hats off to T-Mobile and Kodak for making the effort. Well done you!

NOW FOR THE FUNNY STUFF.

As I was trawling through the internet (although it did not take me long to find these) I have compiled a list of my top 5 weird and wonderful Royal Wedding souvenirs.