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WWTSD: What Would Taylor Swift Do?

Sara Larsen

It’s important to remember to look outside of your industry for the best brand experiences because your business/brand isn’t just competing within your specific niche. Your potential and existing customers are constantly interacting with online experiences and whomever provides the best ones wins (sales, word of mouth, trust, loyalty)! And as a result, customers expect that your brand treats them this way, too.  Sure, you might get some leeway based off your perceived place in the ecosystems of brands (mom and pop shop budgets vs Apple budgets), but that doesn’t mean customers don’t want to have an amazing experience with your brand. And the cold, hard truth is that whatever you’re good at, your customers will only be engaged with you until something better comes along.

In order to make sure your customers are feeling the love, marketers need to think WWTSD (What Would Taylor Swift Do)? Below are some articles covering what Miss Swift does so her fans/customers/audience wouldn’t even dream of giving their loyalty to anyone else but her. Keep reading because I’m going to cover my own experience with her brand during the most recent song launch and then provide you with links that explain the marketing fundamentals that help her achieve success.

I used to try and do my best to avoid the T.Swift marketing train (I’m a former non-fan, who has been converted). But this time around, I decided to immerse myself so I could see the masters at work.

I didn’t really start giving her my attention until about a week before the new single dropped which is *conveniently* when her Instagram presence started to crank up. Her team used a clean, on-brand background featuring a simple countdown on most of her story posts that continually, yet gently suggested I sign up for the “Taylor Nation” newsletter. After seeing that a dozen times or so, I was like, “Sara. Duhhh, You’re a marketer. You need to sign up to see what they are doing on varying platforms.” Even if that did mean I was going to have another email in my already saturated mailbox.

Each of the emails had a clear voice and were overly committed to the new look of this campaign. A colleague and I spent the next couple of days eagerly absorbing fan theories, discussing whether it would be a full album or a single, and patiently waiting as the countdown ticked on.

The day of the drop, Miss Swift revealed a commissioned wall mural in Nashville (#trendy) and somehow a mob of fans with no chill were waiting for her when she visited it. This brightly-painted, beautifully-timed piece continued to amp up the anticipation as if it wasn’t already at peak levels. I’m not a dedicated enough fan to try and even speculate what all the hidden clues were in the painting, but Miss Swift made sure to be clear that there were in fact hidden clues so her adoring fans would let their minds run wild. Two over-the-top things about this mural from a planning perspective are:

  1. fans can revisit it with fresh, clue-seeking eyes after the video has dropped, and;

  2. the mural was painted with the exact measurements of her heels and stature in mind.

That night, I wasn’t intending to stay up for the release, but one more check of my social media before bed made me realize it was only 23 minutes away. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to witness what her team had planned. As I reread a fan theory article, 11:00 p.m. CT  inched closer. Her social media and email were both directing me to the “viewing party” that had a live chat promising T herself answering questions. I scanned the chats for super fans and caught myself nodding off. At less than four minutes left, I switched to my fall back YouTube Channel, Dr. Pimple Popper, (don’t hate) and woke up at 11:08 p.m. (#gmasaraproblemz). I didn’t make it this far for nothing. I took in the pastel explosion at the lowest volume setting as my humans and pup snored nearby.

I woke up the next morning to a text from another appreciator of all things T. Swift and we exchanged our thoughts. I then made sure to show the video to my partner when he woke up and played it a couple more times throughout the day for good measure. Later, I indulged in the latest detailed dissection of the video and checked for what to do next via email and social media. Suggested next steps were to watch the video again and buy themed merchandise. As mentioned above, I did one of those two things.

The previously launched branded Instagram filter now changed to include floating Me!s, which was the title of her new single. And because she’s T.Swift and her brand is global, she remembered that her audience speaks many languages; when tapping the screen the floating Me!s changed to “me” in other languages (Yo!, Mi!, etc.). Now, of course, she could have let her fans figure that out on their own, but this detail was something her and her team wanted to make sure wasn’t overlooked.

And because her and her team are marketing masterminds, when making the Me! music video they shot some extra behind-the-scenes footage that she could use for hype before and after the fact. Don’t worry they all linked back to the video which helped her break the record for YouTube/Vevo views, which I’m sure was one of their goals.*

This is just the tip of the T. Swift experience iceberg. Even though she has an astronomical budget and worldwide fame, I couldn’t help but notice that she used the fundamentals of over-caring about her customers and using clear calls-to-action to meet her goals. So the next time you’re starting to think about your next marketing campaign, just remember, WWTSD?

As promised, here are some overviews that highlight how we can all learn a thing or two thousand from the meticulous T. Swift marketing machine.

* Sara rambling note: What backend access/tools do artists, big brands, and franchises have access to in order for them to do all the things like this? I just want to play around with it! And what does her team use to keep track of this hyper-detailed launch. She used language like “if you’re seeing this that means that Me! has launched”. WHAT ARE THE TOOLS AT WORK HERE, PEOPLE?!?!