Markle recently launched a brand and Netflix series around hosting, taking viewers into the kitchen with her.
If you are in need of some edible flower sprinkles to top your baked goods or a quick and easy pasta recipe, Meghan Markle’s got you.
The Duchess of Sussex recently launched “As ever,” a brand selling specialty food products like wildflower honey and fruit spreads. The launch coincides with the premiere of Markle’s new Netflix series, “With Love, Meghan,” where she shows viewers how to make their own candles and homemade dog treats, among other hosting and culinary activities.
From the outside, it may seem like Markle is trying to shed her royal background in order to become “the millennial Martha Stewart of Montecito.” But is it possible for her to rebrand?
“This is where the big challenge comes in,” said Alex DePaoli, an associate teaching professor of marketing at Northeastern University. “If the first thing people think of when they hear Meghan Markle is the royal family, then that absolutely creates this sort of shadow that she has to pull herself out of.”
However, creating a new chapter for her brand is possible, even if she cannot shed her association with the British royal family.
Northeastern lecturer of marketing Sean M. Gallagher points back to the original Martha Stewart as an example of a person whose brand has evolved as she went from stockbroker to food and hosting media mogul to felon and back again.
“Martha kept at it, persistently trying to figure out how she was going to develop an attractive brand experience, and she was able to do that,” Gallagher said. “She’s been up and down over time. She’s got both favorables and negatives and the favorables over her career have outweighed the negatives.”
Like Stewart, Markle’s career has already had different phases. She originally rose to fame as an actress on “Suits” and also had a lifestyle blog called The Tig where she ran stories on travel, food, fashion and beauty.
The Tig shut down around the time Markle was linked to Prince Harry. She wed the heir to the British throne in 2018. The pair made waves when they stepped down as senior royals in 2020. They launched their own charitable fund, Archewell, and announced a deal with Netflix later that year.
The couple went on to release four docuseries with the streaming service before coming out with “With Love, Meghan” this year and Markle’s new brand (which was announced last year as “American Riviera Orchard”).
As ever is touted as being “created by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex,” while the series makes a few references to Markle’s connections to the royals (including a scene where she tells guest Mindy Kaling that her last name is now Sussex).
The couple’s decision to step down as senior royals led to some controversy. But Northeastern experts said Markle might benefit from channeling her royal family association as she seems to have done to some extent with using the Sussex name with her brand.
“I think that it would be difficult to separate herself from the British royal family,” added Gallagher. “Nor would I suggest she should … (she) can turn (this association) into an effective lifestyle brand with proper execution.”
DePaoli said that sometimes, when a public figure is making a pivot like this, what matters is the name recognition, no matter the association.
Additionally, incorporating some reminders of her royal status may fuel intrigue for people who’ve followed Markle because of her association with and departure from the royal family.
“It’s not necessarily that we are abandoning this association, it is that we are leaning into this continued narrative arc of trying to pivot away from the family,” DePaoli said. “That is fodder, potentially, for people to watch. It’s fodder for people to argue about it online. She’s a controversial figure by social media standards, but that’s the reason why you get a TV deal. The social media marketing basically does itself because of the reputation. … The royal family stuff is not necessarily going anywhere, and that’s part of the appeal of having it always dangling there in the background.”