Prince William and Kate Middleton break royal rules with wedding anniversary video. Photo / Kensington Palace
Prince William and Kate Middleton break royal rules with wedding anniversary video. Photo / Kensington Palace
OPINION
All that's missing is a car logo slapped up on the final frame or a reminder to consult your doctor because side effects might vary.
The 40-second video put out by William and Kate, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge this morning showing the couple gambolling around a grey beach and their Norfolk estate garden with their photogenic children and the soft lighting, big smiles and instrumental guitar music, all seems redolent of the work of a mid-level advertising agency trying to launch a new SUV or constipation drug.
Yesterday was William and Kate's 10-year wedding anniversary, a day they marked by releasing two new shots of them looking suitably stilted.
Somehow – somehow – those crazy kids have made it, thanks to nothing more than a $61 million wedding, two gifted homes, millions of dollars in annual funding from his dear papa and the knowledge that divorce is not an option.
But still, occasions like anniversaries are an excellent chance to gin up support for the family business, and thus the Cambridges (and their Kensington Palace team and filmmaker Will Warr) duly created this highly stylised, overly-produced home movie.
And the only thing I can think: This is a big mistake. Huge. Up there with the time William decided to allegedly give brother Prince Harry dating advice about Meghan Markle.
Yes, it makes perfect sense that the Cambridges and the royal family at large would want to make the most of yesterday's anniversary to rustle up some good PR after a particularly devastating trot.
The last two months have seen his brother and sister-in-law Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex take brutal aim at Buckingham Palace, charging the royal house with allegations of racism and of cruel indifference to Meghan when she suffered suicidal thoughts.
While in the UK support for senior members of the royal family has only gone up overall since then (no, not including you Andrew), those numbers start to look a bit shakier when it comes to the younger generation.
Hence, today's video. Because nothing, or so the thinking here seems to go, will sell the idea of a hereditary monarchy to Millennials and those wavering precipitously close to republicanism more efficiently than watching them eagerly grinning their way through a day of Enforced Family Fun! (And nothing says completely natural, spontaneous outing than everyone wearing spotless, co-ordinating gumboots!)
William and Kate sitting on hay bales while roasting marshmallows with the kids - just like normal people. Photo / Kensington Palace
So sure, this video campaign might work in the short term, but zoom out and expand the view and I think that this video is a miscalculation.
Most glaringly, it makes them just look a bit desperate.
Desperate to be seen as likeable; desperate to wash away the bad taste left in mouths after the Sussexes' claims; and desperate to aggressively peddle the notion that they and their troika of kids are nothing like the grandiose, emotionally stunted caricatures The Crown has portrayed the house of Windsor to be.
They are selling one thing quite heavy-handedly here: Normal.
Look at them toasting marshmallows around an artfully arranged little fire! Look at their spinning artisanal seesaw! No one is playing with a sceptre or practising knighting the cocker spaniel or considering reinvading a colony! So. Damn. Normal.
But normal is dangerous too. Normal dulls the magical lustre of royalty, normal is not special or awe-inspiring or able to sell hundreds of thousands of tea towels.
What is also risky here is this video also crosses a line in the sand when it comes to exposing Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis to the big, wide, gawping world. (The video was viewed nearly five million times on Instagram in the first eight hours alone.)
Since the couple's first bub arrived in 2013, we have been schooled to expect the regular release of charming homespun shots of the kids. In turn, Fleet Street editors would keep their photographers at bay.
However what this video could do is move the dial in terms of public expectations about how much access to their young family William and Kate will grant the public.
Kate and William's 10th anniversary portraits. Photo / Kensington Palace
The losers in this revised equation might be Charlotte and Louis. While their older brother George was always going to have to face the brunt of public interest given he will one day sit on the throne, whatever breathing room his younger siblings might have expected has taken a hit.
The camera here seems resolutely focused on all three of them, no chance of any tiny HRH being overlooked.
This entire video endeavour is also dicey because it serves to highlight the whopping double standard that exists between the Cambridges and the Sussexes.
Imagine for a moment that this production had been put out by Harry and Meghan; they would have been immediately excoriated for going full Hollywood, for showcasing their young son in a totally unprecedented way and for traducing royal values and standards in what would be read as a ravenous, unseemly pursuit of popularity and good PR.
With today's home movie, what we are seeing is William and Kate taking a gamble and pinning the future of the monarchy on selling the royal family as likeable and relatable.
I think today's video also signifies the extent to which the palace believes they need to dial up the damage control.
The official statement put out after the Sussexes' Oprah interview might have only been 61 words long but I think we can draw a pretty clear line between their moment in the TV spotlight and the Cambridges' star turn today.
Had Harry and Meghan not decided to air the royal family's laundry for the world to see, would William and Kate have so eagerly put this production out there? I'm not so sure.
In under a minute, the Cambridges, and the palace, revealed their hand. Whether it's a winning – or a losing – one, we'll just have to wait and see.
