Diamond Jubilee: A PR campaign to remember

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The Diamond Jubilee marketers did a brilliant job on Britain’s super brand.

By now, I feel pretty sure that the royal family and even the most loyal subjects in the land must be feeling a touch of Jubilee fatigue.

I know I am, and I love the monarchy.

Yet what a huge success story the four-day Jubilee spectacular was, with only the weather and the incompetent BBC, with its technical faults, embarrassing glitches and ill-informed presenters, combining to dampen the proceedings. What an advert for Sky.

And how we retailers seized this great selling opportunity with our celebratory events, Jubilee sales, diamond anniversary offers and limited-edition products. From clogs and kaftans to Union Jack underpants, organic oats and VAT-free pasties, all had a Jubilee spin, with Tesco’s Cholmondley-Warner-style TV commercial “celebrating 60 great years with 60% orf”.

The sight of the grand, state landau conveying Her Majesty alongside a regal Camilla back to Buckingham Palace was a scene impossible to imagine a decade ago. Now it was being beamed to billions globally. How come? Well, be assured it was no fluke: it is called marketing and advertising, basic fare to successful retailers.

Like the Olympic Games, but more so, the Jubilee was carefully promoted and trailed, building beautifully to a media climax that drove millions into a frenzy of patriotic adulation. It brought them out in driving rain and biting winds, selling them gold medal discomfort to be part of a spectacle that will echo down the ages.

As founder of once-prolific advertiser DFS, I am a no-caveat, true-blue believer in non-stop investment in marketing and advertising. Indeed, the sybaritic quality of my life is a direct result of depressing the correct marketing and advertising buttons at the optimum time. And those promoting the Diamond Jubilee certainly did that, in spades.

Enjoying an excellent product with wide appeal to promote is heaven on earth for a marketeer, and clearly the Queen and the royal family are something more than merely an excellent product. They are a 24-carat, premium-quality super brand. From Harry to Kate and William, Charles and Camilla, and the Queen and Prince Philip, they comprise an offering with something for every age and taste with truly global appeal.

Paid-for advertising for this mega-brand is clearly out of the question, so a sophisticated, digital era, social media-friendly PR machine was booted up. I hope you have one, too.

This PR, textbook in its planning, was exquisitely executed, as the tremendous response testifies. Historic black and white pre-coronation film, released as a taster, was followed by never-seen-before family movies, supported by up-to-the-minute intimate TV documentaries, aired and repeated at peak times.

Every emotional string was pulled through the magic of music and moving pictures, summed up perfectly for me by that iconic moment when the London Philharmonic Orchestra played as the Royal College of Music Chamber Choir gamely belted out Land of Hope and Glory despite being as drenched as Niagara Falls boatmen.

It all makes one proud to be a retailer – in Great Britain, where we can rely on the weather, John Prescott, the Archbishop of Canterbury and now the BBC to let themselves down, but the greatest of shows goes on and on. Long live the Queen.