The Marketing Genius of Taylor Swift

Love her or hate her you have to recognize the marketing genius of Taylor Swift. In 2022, she made a dazzling pop comeback with a perfectly executed and strategic marketing rollout. 

After surprise-announcing she would be dropping her soon-to-be-highly anticipated 10th album Midnights in a mere few weeks, the star rolled out a new “era.” Well-trained fans began looking for clues across TikTok and Instagram teasers, and making guesses about the surprises Taylor had in store for them during her “Midnights Era.”

What is an era?

An “era” has come to the colloquial meaning of the marketing cycle for a given artist or project. It’s the understanding that each album has a beginning and end, an aesthetic, merch to purchase, and general fanfare. For musicians, this means an album and accompanying tour. While this has always been a practice of marketers and creatives, the audience is now well-versed in the lingo. So much so that Swift has themed her forthcoming Stadium Tour: The Eras Tour in honor of her re-recording all of her albums and “revisiting” each of her past “Eras” as she does so. 

In fact, in some ways, they are as invested in the artist's commercial success as they are in their music. This is in large part thanks to the tight connections fans and artists have formed over social media. Taylor has leaned into this by weaving the narrative of her business battles into her lyrics alongside more relatable heartbreaks and triumphs. 

Today we’re going to look at how Taylor Swift, a professional singer, songwriter, and marketing genius has strategically utilized digital and social media platforms to authentically connect with her fans, win back her narrative, and share her music with the world. 

She understands the value of owned platforms

Like us, Ms. Swift is very serious about owning her work. She has long been a champion of artists getting more of a cut from platforms like Apple Music and Spotify and had brought her fans in to support this effort. Most recently, she publicly took on music manager Scooter Braun as her nemesis after he purchased her master recordings out from under her. Rather than simply allow this, she has vowed to re-record each album to ensure that he saw as little profit as possible. Girlboss move. 

She approaches each platform differently 

As mentioned, in each “era” Taylor leaves clues, easter eggs, and symbolic meanings in her music and the content she posts on social. Fans love it! Each era is about Taylor but she makes it so that it feels like a sandbox of colors, symbols, lyrics, and more for her fans to play in and look for secret meaning. 

On Instagram, fans take “the grid is aligned,” as a clue that there could be a big announcement. As such, Taylor treats this as the place for those huge announcements, the megaphone where she talks to the whole world. 

Meanwhile, Tiktok is for the analysis. Here when she announced Midnight's release, her most conspiratorial fans gathered to exchange Swiftian theories and analyze her every word. The app lends itself well to back and forth and building upon ideas. 

Finally, on Tumblr, Taylor has long cultivated a presence with a vlog where she interacted with her most die-hard fans. In fact one of the fandom’s favorite jokes “no it’s Becky” is a reference to a now infamous Tumblr post. In 2014 she proved that she’s paying attention, and in the internet weeds with her fans, when she wore a No It’s Becky shirt and fans went wild. 

She’s not afraid to look silly

As proven by her willingness to make light of an internet joke about her, in 2014 no less, Taylor is willing to look a little silly if it means engaging with her fans in a fun and meaningful way. Increasingly, social media, especially SFV, is becoming more absurdist. For instance, one Swiftie took to remixing a line from Taylor’s recent song High Infidently to be a cheeky political “joke” changing the lyric “Do you really want to know where I was April 29th” to “Do you really want to know where I was January 6th” just to be silly.    

While not everyone needs to comment on every meme, don’t be afraid to be a little self-deprecating. 

Takeaway: At the end of the day, Taylor is a marketing genius because everything she does ladders up to an authentic community experience built on a love of storytelling and sharing. Think of Taylor Swifts fans as would-be English teachers who love to close read Jane Austen. She gives them opportunities to do just that with content that is relatable to their everyday life.