The first thing Doug Wilson, the CEO of Highland Titles, brings up in our interview is a spot of bother he got into with the Advertising Standards Authority about 10 years ago.
A man – ‘not a well man’, as Doug puts it – reached out to the ASA to say the company had fooled him into thinking he had bought a seat in the House of Lords.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he remembers telling the watchdog.
‘We said, you spent £30 on a gift website here. We’re plenty clear enough about what you get.’
Highland Titles is one of a small number of fairly lucrative businesses that offer regular Joe and Jane Bloggs the opportunity to declare themselves a Lord, Lady or Laird.
It’s all centred on the very real concept of souvenir plots of land – very smallpatches of countryside, usually in Scotland, that are sold to people around the world along with a certificate giving them a highfalutin title.
To be very clear, the sale does not confer legal ownership, legal privileges or legal anything else. Essentially, it just means your name is put on a register maintained by the company in question, informally attached to the piece of land in question.
‘If you bought one from us, you can’t then build on it,’ said Doug.
‘You wouldn’t have the right, you couldn’t get planning permission.
‘Obviously it would never happen, but if there was someone who came along and was standing on your plot and refusing to move, you wouldn’t be able to legally make them move because you’re not the registered landowner.’
This is an important distinction to make because, as I found out later, Highland Titles’ tussle with the ASA resulted in them having to make extra clear how little their product actually gets you. There’s even a section on their site entertainingly titled ’10 Reasons Why We Are Obviously Not A Scam!’
Here’s how the business works, according to Doug. Highland Titles owns a few large plots of land neighbouring some of Scotland’s most spectacular scenery: the first is on the banks of Loch Linnhe, while another is in a remote part of Argyll nicknamed ‘Mordor’ by forestry workers.
When someone buys a ‘plot of land’ on the website (which can be between one square foot and 1,000 square feet), the company assigns a unit of that size to them and links their name with it. Along with the certificate, they’ll get co-ordinates showing exactly where ‘their land’ is located.
As for the title bit, Doug says: ‘What we’ve done to justify these claims is we’ve trademarked the terms Lord of the Glen and Lady of the Glen. So when you buy one of our plots, you get our permission to use our intellectual property and you can call yourself that if you want.
‘Nobody cares, obviously, and you can call yourself Lady Gaga or Lord Voldemort. People just think you’ve had a few too many.’
Among the people who have been cyber-ennobled by Highland Titles are the singer Cyndi Lauper and the late documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. The weirdness of the gift has also helped it appear on breakfast TV shows in Australia and the US, and in 2022 it even appeared in the famous Oscars goodie bag.
You might think – as I did – that this must be a top present for Americans who are a little too attached to their Scotch ancestry. After all, the prices on the website are given in dollars. (That’s $40 for a single square foot and $600 for 1,000 square feet.)
But Doug tells me the UK will turn out to have been their biggest country last year. That includes many Scottish customers – perhaps because they appreciate the tongue-in-cheek nature of the idea, he suggests: ‘Some nations have perhaps got more of a sense of humour than others.’
With enthusiasm also coming from mainland Europe – Germany and France in particular – it all adds up to big business.
In 2024, Highland Titles expected to get around 30,000 customers. The mathematicians among you will note that even if all of those people bought the cheapest product of one square foot, that adds up to roughly $1,200,000 (£967,000).
Those 30,000 people will include some who appreciate what Doug terms the ‘cheekiness’ of the product – but also many who take it very seriously indeed. The decision to send co-ordinates along with the certificate has had some odd consequences.
In the early days of Highland Titles, the company’s founder (and Doug’s father-in-law) Peter Bevis was wandering the land beside Loch Linnhe when he met someone from Australia, then someone from Singapore, then someone from the US. They were all there to see their ‘plots’.
The wild allure and romance of the Scottish Highlands has led many of the ‘Lords and Ladies of the Glen’ to cast aside the technical emptiness of their title and form a real connection. There have been marriage ceremonies on the sites. Ashes have been scattered.
‘We’ve had people in tears when they’ve come to the plot, putting their hands in the soil type of thing,’ said Doug.
‘It’s surprising, I’ll be honest with you. It’s very surprising how attached people can get to this little plot of land’.
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