To think the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge need to work on their PR strategy?

[SamanthaBrique]

In recent months they've been accused of being work shy and what's their solution? To release photos of them and the children on a luxury skiing break! Now I don't begrudge them a holiday, but why make it so public? If they wanted to release photos of the kids then they could've just released a few shots of George and Charlotte at Kensington Palace or Anmer Hall. I don't know who is advising them on their PR but AIBU to think they need to engage someone a bit more in touch with public sentiment?

He couldn't buy the houses he lives in with that at the market rate

Don't assume he would want to buy the house he lives in if he was a private individual.

He inherited £10 million from his mother. That's not that wealthy these days. It's certainly extremely comfortable, but not super rich.

Diana had a problem with the fact that she wasn't super rich and she got a divorce settlement of £15 million .

It was what led her into the arms of Dodi Fayed, and his dad wasn't super rich, by today's standards. But he was rich enough.

I quite like Kate and William. But they, like Diana and Charles, and other members of the Royal Family are greedy parasites with short arms and long pockets.

Some of them, like Andrew, are embarrassingly in thrall to very rich people. Charles flogging off his presents isn't a terribly edifying sight either.

I resent the fact that many highly trained police officers (at massive cost to the taxpayer) are assigned to the lazy pair instead of doing what they were actually trained for.....fighting crime.

I think a job in the Royal and Diplomatic Protection Squad is quite a sought-after role Inis and many of them are not the hot shots that films would have you believe. It does cost a lot though.

Maybe limited but that wouldn't be much consolation to a householder that's just been burgled and has to wait for the next day for a police visit. The massive cut backs in the police force certainly don't infringe on the Cambridges round the clock protection.

No, but I'm saying that it's a gravy train that doesn't just suit the Royal Family.

Gonetosee, not bitter, just have very close dealings with them and moved in the same circles for years.

Bizarre that you personalised it.

As a daughter of a Naval officer and (now ex, but when I was) wife of a soldier that served in the ranks then was commissioned, it was a bloody insult. You turn up, dress appropriately, be polite or friendly (OK, that's a minefield, but very forgiving), and support your other half. Be they male or female. This was an insult.

Bit confused Tigger, what was an insult? That she didn't dish out the shamrocks?

That she refused to accompany her husband, their Colonel in Chief for no discernible reason.

Sorry, missed a bit out there - refused to accompany him to honour the troops.

We don't have the right to be able to discern everything about the RF.

I'm no Kate fan, but if minor illness (hers or DCs') or morning sickness were to blame - for example - then that's private information.

All William's actions are determined by the fact that his mother died as a result of her every action being scrutinised by the media. He does not want this to happen to his family.
The Daily Mail have declared war on the Cambridges because the press are being kept at arm's length.

His mother died as the result of a drunk driver and not wearing her seatbelt.
The DM may have ulterior motives but they do echo, and not lead the feelings of a lot of the population. Kate Middleton has been a joke for being lazy for years, tbh. That's not a new phenomenon.

Oh you know them then, Boffin? That's interesting. Is your vitriol coming from first-hand experience, or the first-hand experience who hate them know them well?

I'm afraid 'moving in the same circles' (do you mean you've actually circled in the same room as them?) doesn't make your largely groundless statements any more objective. Quite the opposite; all the more reason for the heresay to be fuelled by personal emotions.

The Daily Mail has it in for them lately.

Whatever they do, the Mail will twist it and put a negative spin on it.

They can't win.

I think the problem is that the majority of people (especially younger generations) no longer automatically respect the royal family. They have to earn our respect somehow. The Queen has earned that respect by working hard and clearly having a strong sense of duty from a very young age. I am a republican but still have a lot of respect and admiration for her personally in many ways.

The current younger generation of the Royal family, however, hasn't done much at all to earn people's respect. William and Kate don't seem to work very hard or have much of a sense of duty. Kate also damaged her reputation by not doing any proper work in her 20s. It is actually very unusual indeed (even among that set) for a young woman not to have any job at all after graduating. It did make her seem very lazy and entitled, and that is not a reputation that she has managed to shake off.

These perceptions may all be misguided and there may be things we don't know. But I think they are not just generated by the Daily Mail etc. I think that there is a very real problem around how the Royal family continues being relevant in the 21st century. When the next monarchs are likely to be people who, frankly, are not particularly bright, they need to put in quite an effort to convince people that they nevertheless have a role to play! If they don't want to do that, then I for one would be happy for all of them to abdicate

She did have a job, ffs. She worked for her parents. And before anyone says that isn't a proper job (though goodness knows how she could have done anything else anyway trailing streams of paparazzi), take a look at how many people in the country earn a perfectly respectable livelihood working in a family business. My family also, actually.

She worked for her parents and for a clothing company - Jaegar I think it was - and she went to university and got a degree. Previous royal brides did not have an education or a job.

I think its perfectly fine for the Cambridges to concentrate on spending time with their children rather than going out shaking hands. Let the children have as normal an upbringing as possible for as long as possible.

I do agree that not handing out the shamrocks was a mistake though. Also I used to think she was really pretty and stylish but now I think her eyebrows/eyeliner look ridiculous and her hair needs a new 'do.

I think you can defend Kate on lots of grounds (and I'm sure she is a perfectly nice person trying to be a good mother) but you can't really pretend she has ever had a proper job! I am pretty sure from moving in some of the same circles at that time that she certainly worked nothing like even the 80 hours a month William currently works. The issue isn't whether Royal brides in the past worked, but how notable it was that she took an apparently easy path that is highly unusual even for young women who have money nowadays. Getting a 2.1 history of art degree from St Andrews is hardly an achievement when you had the education she had.

I think the real problem, however, is that it means she has not ever achieved anything in her own right. She went from being totally dependent on her parents to being totally dependent on her husband. From a PR perspective that is not something that most young women look up to any more. The original post is about PR strategy, and I just think something has gone very wrong indeed with her PR in this regard.

Kate can still pull it back. It may be that she can achieve great things with her focus on child mental health. But at the moment she hasn't done anything to suggest that she is anything other than middlingly intelligent and highly privileged.

She had a very part time job for a few months found by friends of her parents that she very rarely appeared at.

And actual royals managed to hold down jobs at that time, she was only an on/off girlfriend.

how notable it was that she took an apparently easy path that is highly unusual even for young women who have money nowadays

It isn't remotely unusual to join the family firm. Not even vaguely unusual. I also don't see how 'moving in the same circles' could give you any idea of her working hours, unless you specifically asked her.

When she gave an interview once, she said how annoying it was that people assume she didn't work hard when she actually worked very hard. But she tried to remind herself that all that mattered was that she knew it, and everyone who was close to her knew it. She looked genuinely pissed off and I believed her, having seen that look on my DH's face, who is hard-working but lucky, having had a place in the family business handed to him. Only people who have't worked in a family business think you somehow don't have to work as hard. If business isn't successful, people don't buy the product and the family know it. Pressure can be higher, not lower.

gonetoseeamanaboutadog - without getting into the details of what I know or don't, I think my main point is that this is a problem with the PR strategy. If she really did do full time work for her parents for six or seven years until she married (which I am fairly certain isn't the case but will accept it for the purposes of this thread) then the PR around it was terrible. There was a big fuss made about her spending a few weeks at Jigsaw (which actually just pointed up how little time she spent there), some rumours about her wanting to become a photographer (which led to worse PR when she released pictures of George that were very amateur), and very little at all about her actually doing any work. On top of that, she must have realised that choosing to work for the family firm without any formal title or evidence of actually doing any work was creating huge problems because it made her look lazy and, on the other hand, risked making it look as though she was taking advantage to publicise the firm. It was a huge contrast with Diana, who publicly had a job when she was engaged.

So I think it comes back to the title of the thread. It isn't an issue I have with Kate or her choices, but I think there has been some very very bad press strategy over the last few years. I think that she would have looked immeasurably better had she spent even a year or two in her twenties working for somebody other than her parents, although I don't blame her for choosing an easier option. But I think it makes it even more important going forward for her to do something other than bringing up children, eg using her interest in child mental health in a way that makes a difference and makes it look as though she actually cares and is prepared to put time into something that matters.