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Princess Diana was the original influencer. She didn’t need social media

Princess Diana reminds us that influence can mean more than just earning clicks. It can inspire difficult conversations, change perceptions, and shape behaviour.

Twenty-nine years after her death, Princess Diana remains one of the most influential women in the world, and especially on the internet. Which is remarkable because she never had an Instagram account, never posted on TikTok, and never launched a beauty or clothing brand. Can you imagine Princess Di requesting people to “like and subscribe”?

In an era before influence came to be measured in social media followers, engagement rate, and viral moments, Diana achieved something far more difficult. She managed virality wherever she went in the pre-internet world.

This was fame in its purest form, or as I like to call it, “real fame”.

Today, fame is manufactured. Celebrities can trend worldwide because our algorithms decide they should. Diana became a global obsession because people couldn’t look away. She wasn’t just the people’s princess; she was the original influencer.

Long before people hired “image architects”, Diana understood something fundamental: people don’t connect to perfection; they connect to stories. She knew how to tell hers.

Take a look at her fashion. Today, influencers communicate through carefully curated outfits and subliminal messages in their social media posts. Diana was doing that decades before social media.........

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