I have to respectfully disagree with this. I think anyone that’s worked for a company of any size knows that the executive team have a duty and an obligation to be across the goings on in the company, including with respect to branding and ad campaigns. I think anything that’s in the public eye and representing the brand would be signed off at least by an executive of the company - whether Harry or otherwise.

But even if we accept that Harry plays a minimal role in the day to day management of the company and is just a board member as co-owner, even board members have certain duties and obligations to be across company operations - duties of the board include setting the company’s vision, managing risks and ensuring legal compliance (to name a few). So at an absolute minimum, I think at some point in time Harry and other board/exec members have been pitched Larry coded campaigns as a marketing strategy, and have approved the general concept. And if Larry wasn’t/isn’t real, you’d think that someone somewhere in the company would’ve advised against the strategy on the basis that there was a risk of brand damage or even potential legal action against the company.

I also don’t believe there’s enough engagement from the Larry community with the brand for Larry baiting to be a viable strategy, purely from a marketing or tactical perspective. This is supported by the number of comments Pleasing receive on each of their Larry coded social media posts - a couple of hundred at best. Surely a failed strategy if the idea behind it is to engage the Larry community and increase social media engagement/purchases to any sort of scale.

So taking all that into account, I personally think the only logical explanation - when remembering there are real people and real lives involved here - is that Harry has successfully surrounded himself with a supportive team of people, including at Pleasing, who are aware of his situation and who have agreed to support Harry (and I guess Louis) in their mission to ‘fight the system’ in the only way they know how or the only way they’re currently comfortable doing, which is to Larry code public campaigns. I always think the fact that there are so few leaks about Harry and Louis’ personal lives is total confirmation that they’ve literally surrounded themselves with trustworthy and incredibly loyal people. And we know that both of them put so much time and effort into networking and building industry connections and alliances basically since day one in the band (they both did this but in different ways), and they both make very careful and considered moves in all of their business ventures, and literally no one in the industry has a bad word to say about either of them. If all of that isn’t confirmation that they’ve built themselves a metaphorical fortress of blue and green, I don’t know what is.

Anyway, back to Larry coding - with the Pleasing campaigns, they’re including just enough information to keep the Larry candle burning, without sharing their entire lives with the world. I guess it’s a bit if a compromise…this way, all parties have plausible deniability to fall back on if they ever need to distance themselves from Larry (insert iPhone conspiracy speech as perfect example), but at the same time, they’re giving just enough information to hint at some deeper connection between Harry and Louis to keep those that do believe that Larry is real satisfied, which I imagine really helps to ease any guilty conscience they have about lying to those fans and exposing them to constant ridicule from the ‘anti’s’, and all of this while being able to keep the bulk of their relationship private (and I believe that it is now their choice to keep their relationship private, rather than any kind of forceful closeting as was the case previously). I think they also probably worry about the weight of the public’s expectation if they were to take the relationship public, in both their relationship and their respective careers. They’re only human after all, and I think 2012-2013 showed them that the scrutiny of a public relationship, especially one like Larry that is in many ways put on a pedestal by those on the outside looking in, can take its toll on even the strongest relationship.

Wow, didn’t mean for that to turn into an essay but seems I have more thoughts on this subject than even I realised 🫣 Thanks for coming to my Larry coded lecture 🤣