As ever launch

[AtIusvue]

Launches tomorrow.

So we will find out the prices and how the products will be sold

It's just like the American riviera stuff. I highly doubt any of the products were ever available for purchase on the site, and they probably never will be. But hey she can say my products sold out in x minutes I'm so successful and use it to negotiate more deals, even though it's not really true

She gave a pile of it to Gloria Steinem - I bet she found it riveting!

Meanwhile GP is advertising her new venture. Nothing about spread.

All the give aways!

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After the ARO debacle I read a PR expert saying that her strategy is to get attention - she would prefer it to be good but it doesn’t really matter. As long as her name is high up on the news lists then she will keep getting money from various sources

this launch seems a bit like that tbh - not a lot of substance but a lot of headlines

This gives you an idea of the type of stuff they merch

https://www.snowcommerce.com/snow-report

House of Dragon stuff etc.

It looks really plain and cheap.

And sorry, nobody in LA is eating sugary 'raspberry spread' and pancake mix. Carbs are practically poison for those folks.

Exactly. And when you think about it, the more ‘hate’ she gets, the more fervent her fans become! Desperate to show their locality to her, willing to prove her business is successful.

This is the perfect fandom business.

I mean, it’s the lowest of the low. Manipulating her fans like that. But at least it shows you it won’t go anywhere. It’s only one step up from merching keyring an and mugs. It has a limited shelf life.

I was totally 😂 and 🤣 when the spiel about WLM included the words “reimagining the genre of lifestyle programming”. I just thought it was typical MM exaggeration.

I confess I was wrong! You’ve done sterling work digging this all up @AtIusvue. it smacks of Netflix thinking “we’ve got these two people, have to use them. He’s a dud, but people love to hate her and the papers love to picture her. What can we do with her? She has no skills or discernible talent other than being someone people like to talk about, good or bad. Put her in front of a camera and it’s a disaster. Unless she’s talking about herself. Hmmm. How can we make her talk about herself and make money off of her??”. The fellow in charge of commercial merchandising sales will have been in the room and had a 💡moment. Let’s merch her!

I bet a lot of money Meghan will have wanted her name to be on the product line. Probably some reason why she was stopped (Netflix couldn’t keep it then?). She will have gone on about creative control, my reputation, my image, I want final sign off blah blah. Her focus will have been 100% her image. Nothing else. Doesn’t care about the product, doesn’t care about the business, doesn’t care about the hoo ha - just cares about her image.

And here it is. Feeble, unremarkable, cheap, everyday TK Maxxx banality dressed up in expensive packaging. Netflix succeeded!

Little bit more about the fan base company:

‘Snow Commerce is based in Cincinnati and provides managed ecommerce services used by a number of leading brands to cash in on merchandise opportunities among their fan communities.
Its customers include Minecraft, Warner Bros Discovery, the Star Trek shop, Hulu, X-Box and many others.
Snow Commerce CEO Rick Simpson said the business had been partnering with brands for more than a decade “to build engagement and excitement in their fandoms”.
“Joining forces with Printful allows us to provide a fully-integrated solution, with the highest quality on a global scale, tailored to each brand, and operated by experts in every facet of ecommerce.
“This will lead to even more engaging experiences for fans, and larger and stronger fandoms for our clients.”

How long did she think she’d be able to hide this? Hope the papers pick up on it soon.

She's hardly up there with Minecraft and Star Trek, is she? How big do they think her 'fan community' is? And what do the fans get out of it, beyond the opportunity to spend their no doubt hard earned cash on some over priced pancake mix?

Ted Sarandos said in a recent interview that NF is a 'passive partner' in 'As Ever'.

As I understand it, that means they have made some investment but have no involvement in the running of the business. I really don't think NF care too much about this one way or the other.

True, but in one of her spiels this week (forget which one, there were so many 🙄) she namechecked the Netflix commercial merching fellow and thanked him for making it all happen.

Passive partnership I’m guessing is like a silent or sleeping partner. Putting up some cash, making introductions, but hands off the day to day. We know they’re hands off given how shoddily the website was run, terrible timing, Netflix employees saying they’re over it before it even launches, Meghan having title control over the Instagram stuff - if they’d been on it, it would have been of the caliber of the Bridgerton stuff, which is A+. This is more of a D-grade essay written in fancy calligraphy.

The US just slapped Lesotho with a 50 percent tariff. Even the Republicans are pissed off with the tariffs.

I'm envisioning the As Ever fans slowly starving to death, surrounded by keepsake jam jars, because the food banks have no food and they spent all their money on branded crap.

DM loves to drip feed their articles so I'm wiling to bet they already have journos working in a frenzy to find out everything they can about Snow Commerce. They are probably looking into past partnerships and finding examples that drag down the image of AE. It's interesting that Snow Commerce was bought by a Latvian company recently. Resourceful reporters might be able to go digging there because it would be a lot harder to enforce NDAs if they find someone based in Latvia willing to leak info.

New York Magazine:
https://archive.ph/0bdqM

One commenter mentioned the irony of her selling this while the US implodes.

Yeh, there’s a whole lot just on their web page. Basically they run the shops for tv networks fav programmes. It’s mainly T-shirts and mugs, but they’ve gone jams with Meg.

They sell a lot through Amazon apparently, so her fan merch might end up there.

How can Harry not be embarrassed by this

Every time H & M start some big initiative, it somehow coincides with plague, fire, and now economic meltdown.

I know that Amazon is evil but I do find them useful, and they employ lots of people in NYC. I hope they don't get Sussexed.

Great article

@BemusedAmerican - sorry if I am being dim here - not the first time won't the last - but how could Amazon get Sussexed ?

I've looked at some of the Meghan adulation instas and of course you have to belong to comment. They are vicious and Dr Sophie is getting a big load of " hate" right now and prediction of her " karma" that is coming to her. It's a bit insidious. There's the usual crap too about Meghan being a Queen and her marrying a white prince and it ranges to the illiterates who can barely string two " words" together but who seem to think Meghan being biracial and married to a white prince somehow says something about their lives. To be fair I can maybe understand a small bit of that if I put myself into their minds. The ones I find most bizarre are all the white girls who were invited to NY - what hole in their lives is Meghan filling? Is it some kind of femcel one? I personally don't seek any celebrity to endorse my value or life but it seems they are many who do.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/meghan-markles-as-ever-selling-an-identity-crisis.html?utm_campaign=nym&utm_medium=s1&utm_source=twitter

Nails the confused brand identity

TBF the influencer gift boxes look quite nice, like a little hamper. Even if it's all style no substance.

But they really should have had sausages to sell to Harry's fans...

Here's my opinion as to what Meghan is doing - & to be fair I can see why. I have some experience in sales and sales mgt but this was Business to Business either multi million £ deals or 6 figures. & I have been retired a long while. I have no experience of FMCG at all. These opinions are just me - others will know better.

I think M probably realises that the days of the one off £multi million deals - so NF at £100m Spotify £20m Penguin £20m are over. Whether those numbers are true or not they were big headline deals.

What I think she is doing now is trying to get a number of revenue streams which will add up , and which she hasn't had to invest proper money of her own into.

So As ever - looks like no real stock - can be sold to her followers / admirers or to by extension to eg Kris Jenner's followers if endorsed and others. This means they can more make to demand. If this works then NF may negotiate a more modest deal if they get a rake off from sales of advertised products from the WLM programmes.

If sold through actual shops they will need stock so this is I assume a cheap way of gauging real demand.

"keen eyed observers" have noticed there is a planter on her latest instagram thing so other house type things could follow on this model.

Meghan being a shop front. - On a commission basis - no investment required so purely advertising to those who like her style or again her followers - also a way of getting round she can't use As ever for clothes.

Shop front 2 Cookery brands she has used in WLM eg Le Creuset (People - the magazine - were advertising kitchen things from the program - commission paid for buying through them - I can't believe she didn't take at least part pf this commission. )

Lemonada - which won't pay as much as Spotify but gives her a platform to talk about businesses etc and she may bring them new subscribers which if the series works may end up as a success for a smaller company - and gives her a platform for talking about "her company)

Whilst there is talk about confused branding etc ( & I do not know about this or how it could be done better - others on this thread do know and please comment on my opinion) I can see why she is trying to do a number of things which require no investment on her part - but she will get some income from. No comment on how successful they will be but I can see why she is doing what she is doing.

Could I have summarised that as throw mud at the wall and see what sticks? 😂 I think it is more she is setting hares running and being an influencer is what she knows and she could be good at that on a bigger scale than the Tig because of her new found global fame. & none of these things require huge financial investment on her part.