Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(38)
During the launch of the campaign, Meghan experienced her very own Tig moment when she watched the interaction between the former president of Finland Tarja Halonen and a UN staffer. “Madame President, may I get you anything? Would you like you like water or a pen?” Halonen smiled and replied, “A lipstick.”
It was something that Meghan connected to. She saw no contradictions between a woman running a country and still wearing lipstick—she could be feminine and a feminist at the same time. As she later wrote: “To be a breadwinner at work, and a bread baker with her kids at home.”
At that time, before Donald Trump had entered the race for the presidency, one of her other feminine idols was businesswoman Ivanka Trump, who had her own jewelry and clothing line. She was thrilled when Ivanka agreed to fill in her simple questionnaire for a Tig Talk, and more thrilled when she accepted her invitation to meet for drinks and dinner the next time Meghan was in New York.
Meghan gushed, “Don’t get me started on her jewelry collection: the late night ‘window shopping’ I have done on my computer, snuggled up in my bed with a glass of wine, staring longingly at the beautiful designs. And there are the shoes, the home collection, the clothing, and the natural extension of her brand with a kids’ collection—a smart choice given that she is now a proud mama. When we have drinks, I will make sure I order whatever she does—because this woman seems to have the formula for success (and happiness) down pat.”
With well-known names like Ivanka Trump involved, her little engine that could, her nickname for her website, was gaining a head of steam. She was justifiably proud when her site was named Best of the Web in both Elle magazine and InStyle.
She was, however, in need of help to stoke the boiler. Every post on The Tig had to be cross-posted to Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook to increase traffic; luckily there was an app for that. Even better, there was now a person, Judy Meepos. Meepos, then the deputy editor of the Tech, Yeah! section of InStyle magazine, had gotten a lot of internet air kisses from Meghan in August when she had written a breathless profile of Markle and The Tig. Meghan decided to hire her, Meepos joining her site in October 2014.
Meepos was not only responsible for social media but also, as she said, “wrote and edited daily postings, initiated collaborations and partnerships, and served as a market editor for posts and television.” The popularity of The Tig and Meghan’s account meant that after just six months her little engine was ready to earn its keep through ecommerce. She followed the lead of Jake Rosenberg and Coveteur in partnering with RewardStyle.com, an ecommerce site that, rather clumsily, billed itself as an “invitation-only end-to-end content monetization platform for top-tier digital style influencers and brands around the world”—or, in plain English, a clever way of helping upmarket blogs make money.
The site RewardStyle was founded in 2011 by Amber Venz and future husband Baxter Box as a way for Amber to monetize her fashion blog. For a while their system worked like a dream. Bloggers created clickable links from their content that lead directly to retailers and brands. If a reader clicked through and made a purchase, the blogger earned commission, creating a semi-passive income stream.
By the time Meghan had launched The Tig, Instagram was taking over as the preferred platform for influencers. While their system made it harder to buy products directly, clever web mavens worked their way around that difficulty.
With The Tig in Meepos’s capable hands, Meghan boarded a plane headed to Dublin, where she had been asked to participate in the One Young World Summit, an international forum for young leaders of tomorrow. The biannual conference was the brain child of two advertising executives, David Jones and Kate Robinson, the duo aiming to “gather together the brightest young leaders from around the world, empowering them to make lasting connections to create positive change.” Robinson felt that Meghan had something to say and was popular with the student-aged audience. Not only would she be discussing global issues with young people, but she would be rubbing shoulders with humanitarian celebrities like Mary Robinson, Ireland’s first woman president; Sir Bob Geldof; Nobel Peace Prize winner Kofi Annan; and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador John Chau. At the event, held at Dublin Castle, she made a beeline for Ali Hewson, wife of rock star Bono, who had founded a socially conscious clothing line Edun and an ethical beauty line Nude, subjects which fascinated her.
For her forum on gender equality she was with a high-powered panel who included lawyer Sabine Chalmers, General Electric senior vice president Beth Comstock, digital pioneer Michelle Phau, and film director Maya Sanbar. In the beginning Robinson, who chaired the discussion, was worried if Meghan would cope with a question-and-answer style forum. She came away pleasantly surprised at Meghan’s eloquence, saying, “It wasn’t your average actress stepping up and talking about gender equality. It was the real deal—very forthright, very confident and very un-celebrity.” Others in the audience were also impressed by her grasp of human rights and gender issues as well as her approachability and warmth. Human rights lawyer Phiwokuhle Nogwaza recalled: “She is really soft and gentle. She is friendly and very warm and engaging. It didn’t feel like I was speaking to someone from one of the biggest shows on TV. It was like talking to a regular girl. She knew the problems in detail, which I found incredible. She is humble and really down to earth.”
She also had a real knack of mixing the glamour of celebrity with commitment to her humanitarian work, she and her chef boyfriend Cory Vitiello flying to Florida in early December for Art Basel Miami, an offshoot of the Swiss original. The now annual event, started in 2002, attracts seventy-seven thousand visitors a year, and the place to see and be seen was her usual stomping ground, Soho House.