As always with clients, I am completely upfront about PR outcomes during our very first meeting, and I explained to Ann that I couldn’t be sure how her PR would go. She was a famous face in her native Canada but completely unknown in the UK. It was also a year to go before the TV deal was agreed and Lympne Castle was just one of Ann’s 13 homes scattered around the world, from Necker Island to Las Vegas, so she actually spent a lot of time outside the UK. Despite this, she was happy to give the PR a go and I suggested an initial three-month contract so we could quickly evaluate success, or lack of.
To my delight, our PR got off to a great start, and just got better and better. The British tabloids and the midmarket press lapped up the story that I pitched about a reality TV star who lives by the word ‘unscripted’ packing her bags and moving thousands of kilometres around the world to England, snapping up a 1,000-year-old Medieval castle that she now calls home. I said that she threw caution to the wind after the couple’s youngest of eight children, aged 19 – 33, flew the nest and they decided to buy a bolthole in Britain. I explained that the self-made serial entrepreneur, whose net worth is more than £500 million, is one of the stars of ‘The Real Housewives of Toronto’ and is a household name in Canada. I told how as well as Lympne Castle being a glorious home for the Kaplan Mulholland clan, the famous family will continue the castle’s long-established use as a magical fantasy, fairy tale wedding venue to promote its commercial aspect.
