Where the hell is Kate Middleton?

How the Royal Family created one of their biggest PR fiascos in decades

Long time readers will know I write a lot about celebrity and social media PR campaigns. The core focus of this blog is analyzing the social internet, and while analyzing PR campaigns isn’t exactly the same, it’s definitely related. Good PR relies on being able to anticipate how the social media currents will react to a particular spin on events, and bad PR results from misreading how people will feel.

Whether it’s Reddit, Linus Tech Tips, Joe Jonas or Colleen Ballinger’s ukulele, I’m frequently amazed at how bad famous people and institutions are at basic PR strategy. Today we’re talking about one of the most famous institutions in the world, the British Royal Family, and how they’ve managed to create a massive PR crisis from out of literally nowhere.

Some of you may be thinking “I don’t care at all about the British Royal Family, what the hell is this post?” Buddy, I didn’t care much about the British Royal Family a week ago - but this is an absolutely bewildering rabbit hole to fall down. Trust me on this one and jump in to the conspiracy theories.

The Timeline

The gist of the story here is that Kate Middleton, wife of the current heir apparent Prince William, hasn’t been properly seen in public for months. Rather than recount the entire timeline myself, I’m going to point to the extensive background on social media. Click that link if you want the extended cut. Kate was last seen in public on December 25th. The official explanation from the palace is that she had major abdominal surgery in January and is in recovery, but the timeline includes a lot of weird stuff. It was a ‘planned surgery’ - but shortly before, Kate had announced a trip to Italy during the weeks she would be in the hospital. It’s also odd because abdominal surgery doesn’t typically a two week stay.¹ And weirdly, her family didn’t once visit her at the hospital, and she was never photographed there.

If you don’t follow the Royal Family, you may not realize how bizarre all of this is. The semi-official motto of the Royal Family as stated by Queen Elizabeth is that “I have to be seen to be believed”. They are constantly doing events, charity appearances, having their pictures taken, etc. For a working royal to be out of the public eye for this long is extremely unusual.

Kate was supposedly in a London hospital for two weeks, and was not once visited by her children, siblings, or parents? And there was never a single photograph or video of her there - not entering, leaving, or during her stay? For reference, this is a woman who was smiling in front of cameras in public seven hours after giving birth with a full face of make up and freshly blown out hair. The royal family absolutely love to garner sympathy with hospital photo opps - see how King Charles arranged for photographers to snap him leaving a recent hospital appointment for his cancer.

Royal watchers realized how strange this all was, and speculation began as to what was really happening with the Princess of Wales. #WhereisKate started trending in late February. One Spanish media source claimed she was in a coma, which the palace took the unusual step of officially denying. The first photo or video for months emerged on March 4th, and it was… not satisfying. Or even definitively Kate.

The strangeness and refusal to comment, the single grainy unofficial photo, and the continued absence from public life compounded over time until the story was so big it was hitting mainstream US publications. Social media had worked itself into a minor frenzy. And that brings us to this weekend.

The Photoshop

On Sunday, the royal account posted this image on their official Instagram. For about 10 minutes, this quashed the conspiracy theories. Then the conspiracy theories exploded.

The image has been Photoshopped. And not subtly either - there are numerous, glaringly obvious signs. One kid’s fingers are abominations. Her daughter’s hair floats and disappears. There’s a clear horizontal cut line where Kate’s zipper breaks. The background and tiles have Photoshop cuts/artifacts. Her ring is missing and her daughter’s sleeve disappears. The pattern in her son’s sweater mysteriously changes (right shoulder). These aren’t the kind of alterations that remove blemishes or change lighting. These are the kind of alterations that occur when you’re mashing several different images together into a single Frankenstein’d image.

Major wire agencies from around the world (Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Getty, Reuters, and Britain’s Press Association) all issued ‘kill orders’ on the photo, saying that it had been manipulated and should not be used in news articles under any circumstances. It’s hard to emphasize enough how rare it is for the wire agencies to do that. I’m not sure it’s happened before - ever! - to the royal family.

Instead of cooling down the rumors, the release of this obviously manipulated image turned things up to 11. There are now conspiracy theories that the picture was actually taken months ago. Some think her face was pasted in from a different picture, possibly this Vogue cover.² Theories are absolutely running wild. They range from the plausible to the farcical

• Kate’s actually had some sort of serious medical issue that the palace doesn’t want anyone to know about, and is deathly ill

• Divorce is imminent, and William will be marrying his alleged mistress Rose Hanbury.

• There are marital troubles and Kate is on strike, refusing to be seen until she gets what she wants

• Kate was injured in a fight with William and it’s being covered up

• Kate had surgery and is bloated from prescribed steroids, refuses to be photographed

• Kate had plastic surgery

• Kate’s hair stylist fucked up her bangs and she’s waiting for them to grow back out³

• Kate got a Brazilian Butt Lift.

To say that all hell broke loose would be an understatement. The palace released an official tweet where Kate (or someone writing for her) took the blame.

Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day. C

People were, to put it lightly, skeptical.

The idea that Kate has been teaching herself Photoshop on the ol’ family computer beggars belief. I’d be stunned if she knew her own Instagram password. So here’s the million-dollar question: How could the palace have bungled this all so badly?

The PR game

Let’s rule out one explanation right away.

It’s not that the palace is out of touch and didn’t realize what was going on. These people obsess over press coverage. They each have a small army of PR flunkies, publicists, handlers and orbiters. When there are rumors flying or when one of the royals is trending, they are intensely aware.

And yet, despite knowing there was a frenzy of speculation about Kate’s status, despite knowing that social media was in full-blown conspiracy mode, they still released an obviously faked/manipulated photo. Why would they do that? All they had to do was take some dead-simple photos, or a short video. Instead they did the stupidest possible thing they could have done.

So why?

I want to return to something I wrote last year - You Can Lie, But Only a Little.

You Can Lie, But Only A Little

Quoting from that piece:

When you say “This is the easiest it’s ever been for me to make fresh meals at home! I’m a satisfied customer myself! I weep uncontrolled tears of ecstatic joy every time the package comes!” does your audience believe that’s literally true? Does it even matter if it’s literally true? Probably not. Your audience has seen you read or write ad copy for dozens of sponsors. They’re aware that you probably don’t actually cook HelloFresh every night and that you are not actually filled with ecstasy every time the HelloFresh delivery arrives. What they do probably expect is that you won’t endorse something that’s genuinely terrible - that HelloFresh won’t taste extremely bad, poison them, or scam them out of money. And since HelloFresh easily passes this standard, life for you as the influencer is good. Your standard is this: You can lie, but only a little.

The piece above was written mostly about influencers. While the royal family aren’t precisely influencers, they’re similar in a lot of ways. And the public holds them to a similar standard - we accept that they lie, but expect it to fall within certain reasonable bounds. They can fudge the details of a medical condition, but not outright lie about it. They can use an obviously fake excuse for why someone isn’t appearing in public, but not in conjunction with several other obvious lies. They can reuse old photos sometimes, but they can’t badly Photoshop on Kate’s head and pretend it’s a new photo.

The main thing to understand about the royals is that they’re accustomed to getting their way on these things. They use lies, bullying, and deception as a media strategy. And the British press usually lets them get away with it. There are several reasons why that happens. There’s some level of basic tradition and respect for the royal family. The UK’s famously strict libel laws make the papers afraid to publish anything controversial. Fear of getting cut off from access makes the British media pliable. The embarrassment of how the press hounded Princess Diana to her death also overshadows a lot of this. The end result is that for the most part, the British royals can kill stories they don’t approve of. Look and see how the UK press entirely refuses to print rumors that William had an affair with the Marchioness of Cholmondeley.⁴

The royals are also (unsurprisingly) the kind of institution that’s willfully stuck in the past. The only method of contacting their press office is via a phone number that connects to a royal family switchboard. They operate a complicated set of arrangements with press known as the ‘royal rota’ where they trade access for favorable press. They’re used to being able to tightly control negative coverage.

Unfortunately for the palace, this episode has spiraled out of their control. For the royals, the phrase might be “You can lie, maybe even more than a little, but just don’t make it super obvious”. Well, it’s now hit the point where it’s super obvious they are lying. We don’t know about what, but now that everyone’s paying attention the accumulated deceptions have created a frenzy. They lied, more than a little. And now that the international press is on the scent, it’s going to continue to be a big story. The international press owes them no allegiance and will do them no favors.

The Social Media Vacuum

Scientists say nature abhors a vacuum - when vacuums occur, devoid of anything inside them, matter rushes and fights to fill that empty space. Social media is much the same way - in the absence of explanation or evidence, conspiracy theories and wild speculation will naturally rush to fill the void.

There’s a rule of PR - if someone is making very obvious PR blunders, over and over, it’s probably not an issue of a bad PR team. It’s probably a bad client insisting on a stupid strategy. I think there’s a failure on the part of the palace to understand how modern social media works.

The royals are traditionally photographed all the time. By creating a window where Kate wasn’t officially seen for months, they invited speculation. By refusing to provide even a shred of evidence to squash the speculation, they created a conspiracy. And now they’ve made it significantly worse by lying. They’ve Streisand Effect’d the situation with their manipulated photo.

The question has always been ‘What the hell is going on with Kate?’ - but now it’s ‘What could be so bad that they feel obligated to release fake pictures’? It now seems much more sinister, even if it ends up being something minor. The royals track all the gossip around them VERY closely. They’re aware of all this, and they release a shitty photoshop anyway? Even if you’re not a conspiracy theorist, this hints heavily that something must be going on.

The most likely explanations are still the boring stuff - she’s just taking a break, or she did have surgery, perhaps she’s bloated from a procedure and doesn’t want to be photographed right now. But the fact that we still haven’t seen a clear photo or video of Kate in the last two and half months means that vacuum of evidence still exists. And as long as it does, conspiracies will fill the void.

1. I donated a kidney - they cut a whole-ass organ out of my body - and I was only in the hospital for two days before being released.

2. This one, despite being a very close match, is false upon close inspection.

3. This would be by far the funniest possible outcome

4. Yes, that’s her actual title. Pronounced, ‘Chum-lee’, because why the hell not.