Canberra's Royal Touch

They got stuck into me at lunch yesterday because I didn’t support the Royal visit……well it’s not that I didn’t support the Royal visit, it’s just that I don’t fully understand that fuss. I don’t get it, OK. That’s all. I’m happy for the Queen and Prince Philip to come here and go to parades and wave and accept flowers….I just don’t get it.

I think you do have to appreciate the amazing marketing aspect of the visit for us here in Canberra.

You cannot underplay the value of the world wide promotion from the Queens visit.

You probably can overplay it though and that’s what the ACT Government has done.

Dead set the local town council have come up with a dollar figure of what the Canberra promotion was worth……what the media coverage would have cost us.

They’ve put the figure at $35 million.

$35 million.

Guys it’s the Queen….it wasn’t Oprah Winfrey

And yet one of the people backing this figure is our very own Warren Apps from Grey World Wide media.

We got articles specifically about the Canberra leg of the visit on the BBC and CNN….in the Guardian, The New York Times, the Washington Post…the Himalayan Times…the Brunei Times, the Kenya Star and the Denver Times……and that’s all good….but it is really worth $35 million.

Will someone reading about the Australian War Memorial in the Kenya Star in Nairobi, will they be inspired to book a holiday to Canberra. I think not.

On the other side of the coin, how much do think the royal visit actually cost us ?

Not as much as you may have thought. The figure being bandied around this morning is around $100,000