The Royal Wedding

Contributed by AMAN OBEROI

When I read reports of people waking up at 4am to watch the Royal wedding , I knew that this was the Wedding of the decade. One can understand UK going all gaga over the wedding but such was the kind of global hype surrounding the wedding that the hysteria was not limited to the UK alone. People from Australia to India to the US have been talking about this event.

Analysts have estimated that the economic impact of the Royal Wedding is around $3.3 billion, although there were no direct sponsors for the wedding, the TV channels had a great spectacle to cover, which meant more eyeballs that translates to higher advertising revenues.

Brands such as Pond's White Beauty(The reason for Princess Kate's flawless glowing skin), Maggi Pazzta (Italian delight For those hungry moments during the extremely stretched wedding), Volkswagen (The German People's car sponsoring the Royal Wedding), MakeMyTrip (Royal Honeymoon Packages) , 

Tanishq (the wedding ring), Slice ( Aamasutra??), Yardley (The only British Brand in this list) - All of them lined up to be sponsors of this Mega Event. This was in India!

In the online space we had the the Royal Wedding Channel on Youtube, which was the most viewed channel that day with live streaming of the Royal spectacle. But the single most impressive Royal wedding Stunt was pulled off by T mobile, who spoofed the Royal Wedding Entrance Dance in this Video 

They used Royal Look alikes to create an impressive sequence which has attracted 18million views so far. They had a channel named the Life is For Sharing Channel which showcased their creative genius.

Shaadi.com chose to take advantage of the Royal Wedding by using the Royal Wedding theme to revamp their website and ran a survey on which do their members think is the best Indian celebrity to match Prince William. The survey showed that Katrina Kaif as the top voted celebrity with 75% votes followed by Priyanka Chopra and Sonakshi Sinha. 

The Kodak ad, which was a corny pun intended at Middletons (Middletones).

TLC has been offering viewers 89 hours of programming with royal themes, among them “Royally Astounding: 30 Defining Days of the Monarchy,” “Untold Stories of a Royal Bridesmaid” and “Wild About Harry.”

Betty Crocker has been a symbol for the American Kitchen Values since 1921 but even they found a reason to get associated with the British  Royal Wedding, with a special Royal wedding cake recipe.

The Papa John's commemorative pizza was too much for Advertising Age, which said, "There is no excuse for this sort of marketing tie-in".

Such a neutral event allowed brands to jump onto the advertising brandwagon and get associated in anyway that was possible. Such a stunt works only if executed properly , otherwise they might end up like Kodak , whose Middleton ad is being severely criticized (only a 34% approval rating).But if pulled of with grace they could end up becoming Legendary campaign like the T Mobile Dance.