A right royal occasion

Working in PR, we get to meet a lot of interesting people. From celebrities and politicians, to changemakers and charity supremos. But they don’t come with a higher profile than The King.

This was a situation we found ourselves in recently, when we handled the comms for a client who was due a visit from His Majesty King Charles III. During the royal visit to Bradford, the 2025 City of Culture, a key part of the King’s itinerary was to visit the city’s Impact Hub – which was celebrating five years of social impact by transitioning towards a Yorkshire-wide remit.

We’ve dealt with a few royal visits before, but this was the first time I’d been involved with a visit from a reigning monarch. Having said that, I’d actually met The King when he was Prince Charles, on several prior occasions – notably when he popped around for tea (not even joking) when I was about two, and when I photographed him for a school newspaper in 1998.

Royal visits are always highly choreographed and include an understandably high level of security. Because of the secrecy over the schedule, we were amongst a select group of people who were party to the detail, as the plans emerged.

We worked with our client, Impact Hub Yorkshire, to liaise with the Buckingham Palace communications team about protocol and procedure for the visit, which would involve The King meeting with a variety of individuals and groups whom the Impact Hub had helped.

During a series of online meetings with The Palace, we fed in key messages about Impact Hub Yorkshire’s work, agreed the relevant wording for the press notice, provided background information, as well as inputting advice on media attendance.

Like all royal visits, ensuring that a select group of media are in-attendance will help the day run smoothly. Therefore, only five journalists were allowed on the list. From a broadcast point of view, this included a ‘pool’ representative (in this case GB News), who would supply footage to all regional, national and international outlets as well as the news wires.

We were able to feed into this process, by suggesting two of the five media attendees – one regional journalist and our own photographer. On the latter point, getting this right was vital. We approached our long-time collaborator David Lindsay (whose stunning images you can see throughout this post), who has photographed The King before, and is fully aware of the need to be agile and adaptable in these high-pressure situations.

One might think that working with a major institution like the royal family would be overly procedural and complex. However, it really was a delight to work with the team at The Palace, who were quick to respond, amenable to requests and up for getting creative in terms of leveraging the visit for our client.

Not only were we able to bring our own photographer, but we also agreed to distribute our own press release in addition to the official notices. Knowing protocol in this situation is invaluable, and working in an agile way goes without saying.

On the day itself, we arrived early and met with the royal communications officer. During the hours preceding the event, we worked with our client to ensure that each part of the visit was choreographed, and attendees knew where they needed to be at each point.

When the photographers and media arrived, we accompanied them on a walk around, so that everyone could scope out the situation adequately.

Often royal visits can be defined by the images produced. Knowing this, we came up with the idea of presenting The King with a Bradford City FC shirt, bearing the name ‘Impact Hub’ – a nod to the club’s promotion this season. We knew that this would work brilliantly from a visual point of view and get across the civic pride and character of the city.

During the visit itself, The King was generous with his time and spoke at length to attendees on a range of issues. He was entertained by the playing of a traditional Tabla drum, and met a variety of people. Our role was very much to remain in the background, and work with David to secure the right shots.

And while the visit lasted a little over 45minutes, there was a lot to pack into that time and the work didn’t finish there. Because we’d agreed to distribute the press release after the visit, it was a case of making sure that the media had everything they needed.

Our post-visit duties included acting as a media spokesperson, introducing journalists to the attending guests, working to secure a small selection of imagery to accompany our own release and sending the release out.

Because we’ve worked with David extensively before, we were able to get shots approved and out to press within the hour. This helped us to ensure Impact Hub’s news was covered by local, regional, national, international and trade publications.

One of our key strengths is working flexibly with our clients, so even though the visit came in the middle of two of our busiest weeks for the business this year, we were still able to prioritise this important event and deliver the goods.