There is a man who sells honey from a trestle table in Long Buckby market place. Not remarkable honey. Honey.

For two years he stood at the far end, next to the bloke doing scotch eggs, and nobody troubled him. Then in April he laminated a photograph and taped it to the front of the table. It shows him, squinting, beside a moderately famous person at what appears to be a wedding. The famous person is holding a drink. The honey is not in shot.

He now sells out by half ten.

Nothing about the honey changed. The bees were not consulted. What changed is that a queue now forms in front of a laminated photograph, and a queue, as any market trader knows, is the actual product.

I thought about him this week when it emerged that Meghan Markle is in talks to appear in the third series of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen. Not to carry it. Not to star in it. To appear. Possibly for one episode. Possibly not at all, given that talks are reportedly at a very early and entirely hypothetical stage and the third series has not been commissioned. Normally that detail would slow a story down. This one did not slow by a second.

Now consider what happens if British business adopts the Duchess model.

Your accountant no longer files the VAT return alone. She files it flanked by a minor royal, in a marquee, with a drone shot. The plumber who comes about the ballcock brings a former cast member of Suits to hold the torch. The tap still drips. Four million people watch.

The garage on the bypass advertises a Duchess-adjacent MOT and takes on three extra staff to answer the phone. The parish meeting books someone off Strictly to unlock the door and is oversubscribed for the first time since 1974. Nothing has improved. The council still cannot agree on the bins.

But everyone is looking, and looking is the scarcest commodity in commerce.

Here is the bit business readers will recognise, because most of us have signed this invoice. Netflix is not casting an actress. It is buying customer acquisition, very cheaply indeed.

Think what it costs to relaunch a returning drama into a crowded autumn schedule. Trailers, outdoor sites, paid social, the whole grinding apparatus of persuading distracted people a thing exists. Millions, most of it wasted on people who were never going to watch. Now price the alternative. One guest appearance, one leaked casting rumour, and every tabloid and breakfast sofa on earth becomes an unpaid media buyer working your account for free. The story I am writing about is itself the campaign. So is this column, which is a humbling thought before breakfast.

That is the trade. You are not paying for talent. You are paying for distribution you could not buy at any price.

The catch is that borrowed attention is rented, never owned. Ask anyone who has bolted a famous face onto an average proposition and watched the numbers sink the moment the face moved on. David Beckham is about as strong a personal brand as this country has produced, and it did not stop him quietly selling out of a struggling cannabinoid venture that never found its market. Fame gets people through the door. It has never once persuaded them to stay.

Which is why the structure here is the clever part. Netflix has already tried owning the brand, lifestyle spin-offs and homeware included, and has been unwinding that arrangement ever since. What it wants now is not a five year marriage but a single, well-timed episode. Stop retaining the ambassador. Rent the moment. Any SME owner talked into a twelve month influencer contract when a fortnight would have done should pin that above the kettle.

There is a domestic dividend too. The Gentlemen shoots in Britain with British crews, at a time when the BFI reports £6.8bn of film and high-end television production spend in the UK. Netflix has tripled the size of its London headquarters, and Creative UK is pushing a £35m fund into creative businesses. A Duchess relocating to a discreet address outside London to work on a British production is, in the most literal sense, inward investment in a very good coat.

One last thing about Long Buckby, which I have been saving. It sits a few miles from Althorp, Earl Spencer’s estate, which makes its owner Prince Harry’s uncle. I lived within a mile of that gate for years, and the neighbours make remarkably little of it.

So if the Sussexes really are coming home, the most valuable laminated photograph in Northamptonshire is one my honey man has not taken yet.

He understands the principle already. He has started handing out little wooden spoons with samples.

The photograph gets them to the table. The honey is what brings them back next Saturday. Somewhere in California, a spreadsheet already knows this.

The bees, as ever, remain uncredited.

Richard Alvin

Richard Alvin is a serial entrepreneur, a former advisor to the UK Government about small business and an Honorary Teaching Fellow on Business at Lancaster University.

A winner of the London Chamber of Commerce Business Person of the year and Freeman of the City of London for his services to business and charity. Richard is also Group MD of Capital Business Media and SME business research company Trends Research, regarded as one of the UK’s leading experts in the SME sector and an active angel investor and advisor to new start companies.

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Richard is also the host of Save Our Business the U.S. based business advice television show.

Richard is also the founder of the CBM Foundation, Capital Business Media’s charitable foundation, which gives 1% of the group’s time, product and profit to charity every year.

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