I’m not going to pretend to know the real story of the Duchess of Sussex’s lifestyle brand or how it evolved from American Riviera Orchard to As Ever. Meghan announced the name-change last night in a sweet IG video, and the British press has been hyperventilating ever since. I finally checked in on the Daily Mail and they’re still talking about how they found one guy in Montecito who says he never heard of anyone refer to Santa Barbara as the “American Riviera.” That’s how panicked they are – they’re claiming that Meghan changed the name because one guy had never heard of it. They’re also trying to figure out the timeline and how Meghan fooled them:
Meghan Markle’s rebranding of American Riviera Orchard was today called a ‘total rush’ using ‘recycled’ promos made a year ago. The relaunch leaked online at least 24 hours before her Instagram announcement, MailOnline can reveal – and came just a fortnight before her new lifestyle show with business partner Netflix is broadcast.
As Ever has been launched in a breathless selfie-style video and will sell jam – first trailed by Meghan and her famous friends last year – plus what looks set to be huge homeware and gardening ranges in the US.
Prior to Meghan’s announcement last night, internet sleuths had already discovered a Shopify website she’d set up for her As Ever products, featuring an unseen picture of the Duchess cooking. The shot of the Duchess of Sussex using a mixing bowl is believed to have been taken during Meghan’s original American Riviera Orchard (ARO) promo almost a year ago. She is wearing the same white outfit and appears to be in the same kitchen filmed for the brief teaser trailer filmed when ARO’s existence was revealed last March 14.
It also appears Meghan and her team made a last-minute change about the branding and the previous URL as-ever-store.myshopify.com now takes shoppers to her new website asever.com. The mixing bowl picture of Meghan was last night replaced by the picture of her holding hands with her daughter Lilibet in the garden of their Montecito mansion as they skip across the lawn.
One branding expert told MailOnline today: ‘It appears to have been a total rush – despite what Meghan says about As Ever going back to 2022. They’ve clearly had to abandon American Riviera Orchard but recycle all the promos due to the trademark dispute. The leak happened yesterday and you have to wonder if her hand was forced’.
While Mark Borkowski, arguably Britain’s leading PR guru and crisis manager, has said he believes the U-turns are all clever tactics to get publicity. He said: ‘This isn’t an identity crisis. It’s a business model. Meghan isn’t floundering; she’s fluctuating on purpose. The perpetual reinvention, the strategic vagueness—it’s all by design. The more unpredictable she is, the harder it is to take her down. She’s not trying to be Goop; she’s trying to be a mystery. The product she’s selling? Endless curiosity about Meghan Markle. So maybe she’s not losing control of her narrative—maybe we are’.
Their “insiders” claiming that this rebrand was a “total rush” are missing something – that Meghan used ARO as a front and hid As Ever on purpose. It makes perfect sense that ARO was always supposed to be something vague for the tabloids to chew on and obsess over, meanwhile Meghan and Netflix have been putting As Ever together behind the scenes. People were tracking ARO and all of the trademark issues, and now all of that looks like tabloid busywork. “But she recycled the images!” Yeah… she did a product photoshoot and used a couple of those images for people to find as they were doing deep dives on ARO?
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, IG video, As Ever site.
