News/article
What will the Royal Wedding and the London 2012 Olympic Games do for the brand UK?
It’s going to be a big 18 months for the United Kingdom. With a royal wedding followed by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games the country will be at the heart of the two biggest global media events in history. In fact, if the Beijing Olympics are any indication, television viewing figures alone for the Olympics will exceed 4 billion, with a significant proportion of those viewers simultaneously enjoying coverage on social networks like Facebook. Even thirty years ago – before the web was invented – the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana enjoyed 750 million television viewers worldwide, quite aside from the global news coverage it generated. Taken at face value, this can only be a good thing for the UK, catapulting the nation onto the world stage and generating significant investment and economic benefits through advertising, travel and tourism and trade. For example, Reuters and others are bullish about the value of the Royal wedding, estimating a boost to the UK economy of $1 billion this year alone.
But what will these events do for the UK’s brand and will it have a lasting effect?
