The Taylor Swift Side of McSwift: A Personal Take On Marketing by Jaclyn Ben-Porat 

By Jaclyn Ben-Porat, McSwift: Marketing Analysis of Franchise vs Artist Team

     2014 has been an incredible year for music artist Taylor Swift, whose name has been featured in the news for so many of her achievements that compiling all of those instances is an impossible and lengthy task. Her success is largely down to the marketing strategy she employed to both generate publicity to attract new fans and connect with her already established fan base. That strategy, which has only recently begun to be utilized by other artists and brands, is founded heavily in personal interaction with her audience. Swift took away a barrier that is, for most artists in her position, largely ironclad and separates the figure of the celebrity from the normal, regular person who might support their work. Through social media channels, as well as a certain personable behavior during in-person appearances, Swift managed to craft a highly profitable and enviable position in the music market of today. The McSwift Marketing project at UCSB proved that Swift’s tactics had a direct correlation to her public perception and monetary gain.

     Social media’s power has grown exponentially in the last five years, making it an ideal location for artists such as Swift to attempt to promote their projects and work. However, not every artist who signs up for an account on one of the social networking powerhouses such as Twitter ultimately benefits from such a decision. This is due to a lack of personalization that can befall celebrity Twitter accounts wherein the record company or management of the artist in question is behind the operations. Most tweets include links to online stores to make purchasing products easier, and if they do not they typically only include details about where the artist will be making an appearance, whether that is in public or on television. This type of Twitter usage makes fans of the artist less likely to actually follow them, as fans largely use the site to develop a more personal connection with each other and the artists they love. If there is a feeling of a corporation behind an artist’s account, fans are put off.

     Swift avoided this complication early on when she created her Twitter account, and has continued to keep it clear of anti-interpersonal interactions. Her Twitter handle, taylorswift13, has nearly 50 million followers and her tweets are frequently featured in news segments on entertainment shows as she is considered one of the most prominent Twitter presences. The content of her tweets consists of 140-character anecdotes from Swift about her day, normally humorous, and they get upwards of a million retweets. Before the release of her fifth album, “1989,” Swift kept her tweets this way and used them as a place to let her fans hear about the inner workings of her mind. An underlying message is palpable from each of these tweets: she is a normal person, who has embarrassing moments and silly passions like everyone else. While a quick glance at Swift’s net worth would suggest that she is far from normal, her Twitter representation of herself holds up this message successfully.

     When the corporate side of Swift had to get introduced to her Twitter, she still managed to keep her tweets personal. To promote “1989,” she created the hashtag #taylurking, which she tracked and selected fan’s photos from to repost. After each compilation of fan photos, Swift included a couple of lyrics from her new album, as well as an iTunes link to buy it right then and there. This encouraged those who already followed her to buy her album, and then to send her photos of them with it so that she might feature them in one of her tweets. The hashtag currently has nearly a million tweets, and people still add to it even though Swift stopped doing the compilations after the week following her album release. She created a segregated social media movement, which simultaneously gained her Twitter followers and, because the hashtag trended on the main site, new fans who could purchase her album. Swift had one of the highest Twitter following gains of the year, with nearly 11 million new followers obtained throughout 2014. Her method of cross-posting other social media forms on her Twitter helped her to attract this number of people.

      The main alternative form of social media that Swift utilized during 2014 was Tumblr, an even more personal networking site that allows its users to interact by sharing content about their favorite music, movies, television shows and other art forms. A platform such as this might seem perfect for artists to promote themselves with, however there is a surprisingly small number of verified celebrity Tumblr accounts. Swift’s is the most popular since its creation, and that is due to several factors. For one, she attempted to connect with the Tumblr community by reaching out to them for help. She had never owned a Tumblr account before and did not fully understand how to use it to its fullest potential. She made a post asking her followers, and anyone else who tracked the ‘help’ tag, to send her messages telling her how to speak, post animated gifs and reblog things she liked. The community responded tenfold and she was soon able to start posting. Much like Twitter, a common celebrity Tumblr account downfall is that artists only use the site to promote their products. Swift did not take this turn on Tumblr, either, and instead established that she was there to socialize with her fans. She answered fan submitted questions and reblogged fan posts, adding her own commentary to them and making fans start to post more about her in the hopes that she might acknowledge them. Furthermore, Swift was quick to make jokes about herself when she failed at doing something correctly. She even wore a shirt referencing a Tumblr meme about her, wherein a joke was made using an old photo of her from high school. It made the Tumblr community feel as though she truly understood them and did not want to dismiss them like many other artists and media personalities frequently do and have. Her presence on Tumblr introduced her to another area of the Internet that has been gaining prominence, and many who had previously never taken an interest in her liked her personality enough to purchase her newest album.

     The list of endorsements that Swift has signed with major companies for is quite extensive, however none of them have the qualities that typically categorize celebrity product deals. For instance, in the follow-up to the release of “1989,” Swift partnered for the third time with Diet Coke and appeared in a commercial/YouTube ad for them that was far more about Swift as a person than Diet Coke as a product. In the commercial, Swift drinks Diet Coke and keeps making cats appear. One of the cats happens to be her real life cat, Olivia, and this delighted viewers because Swift has proclaimed multiple times that she identifies as a cat lady. In the past, Diet Coke has sponsored Swift’s live tours, and is a confirmed partner for her upcoming 1989 Tour along with American Express. American Express is the main sponsor for her 2015 tour, and Swift collaborated with them in a way that no artist has ever done before. The company created an app for smartphones that is synced up with the music video for her single, “Blank Space.” In it, fans have the opportunity to explore the house the video was filmed in by taking a 360-degree virtual tour of the property. There are added behind the scenes details from Swift, including extra video content and exclusive photos. The app became incredibly popular in the wake of the video’s release, and the feedback from fans was largely that they loved the ability to find exclusive Swift content. They felt as though she had created the app specifically to make them get to know her better.

     To further expend the personable factor of Swift, she also partnered with Keds shoes and made two separate collections of espadrilles that are meant to reflect her style. She featured in ad campaigns, as well as online videos, to promote the lines and in the most current one her song “Style” was used as background music. In this instance, the very fact that Swift partnered with a fashion brand shows a personal touch. Style is meant to be an individual thing, and Swift expressing what is meant to be her own personal style in the creation of her shoe line. The online videos she appeared in drive this home even further, as the common theme of them is that it takes bravery to be able to show off your personal style to the world. The marketing behind this line is perfect for Swift’s personal take on marketing herself since it is meant to allow fans further access into her mind by being able to purchase shoes that reflect what she would supposedly wear.

     When it comes to her in-person appearances, her tours are always designed to make attendees feel as though they are getting to know her better during her two-hour sets. Her Red Tour, where she promoted her fourth album “Red,” was theatrical and fully designed by Swift. The stage set-ups reflected the lyrics of her songs, letting fans see what she pictured while she was writing them, which added a more personal layer to a show that could have potentially been more about a large production than a connection with the audience. Swift also chose to do something unusual for nearly every date on her last two tours, which was to invite a special guest in the form of another famous artist to perform a duet with her each night. While she toured the States, her guests’ hometowns were primarily the locations she played. She called each one her friend and had a playful stage presence with them, letting the audience watch as the two artists bonded in front of them. During her tour stops in the United Kingdom, Swift brought out English artists to perform with her and pump up the crowd. One of these artists was Ed Sheeran, who had been her opening act during the American leg of her Red Tour, and the two have been widely public about their friendship. Them singing together in his home country allowed English fans to view her more positively, as she attempted to reach out to them with an artist who they were proud of for his success. She catered to her audiences well and made them feel like the experience was more personal because of that.

     She catered to her audiences on a more publicized scale when she promoted her work on international television. Her appearance to promote her album “Red” on the English talent search, “Britain’s Got Talent,” could have simply been her singing one of her songs with her band, as she did for her first few albums. However, she once again brought out Ed Sheeran to sing their duet “Everything Has Changed,” which was one of two collaborations on “Red.” Their friendship had been chronicled thoroughly in the British press, as she did not become a household name until around the time their friendship started, and so their appearance together to promote her album fit with the way she had been presented to the British audience up until that point. The performance itself was filled with Swift and Sheeran smiling and laughing at each other, making it seem almost as if the audience was getting to watch the two mess around on guitar privately instead of in front of a live studio audience.

     Swift brought another normally private matter to the forefront of her marketing this year, which was the discussion of social issues that affected her. In several interviews leading up to the release of “1989,” radio personalities and magazine writers asked her questions about the treatment of women in the music industry. Swift, in turn, spoke about the difference between how the media speaks of her and how men in the same position as her get talked about. She pointed out that Sheeran, as well as singer-songwriter Bruno Mars, are famous for writing songs about the relationships they have been in, and yet they do not get labeled as a crazy ex while she does. She acknowledged the rampant sexism in that fact and called the media out for framing stories about her in that manner. She also began speaking about the importance of female friendships in her life, which she had beforehand never really talked about in favor of discussing the impact of relationship love in her life. She named fellow artists Selena Gomez and Lorde as women who inspire her, as well as author and actress Lena Dunham as someone who taught her about what feminism means. Many female artists have shied away from discussing the ‘F’ word in the past for fear of being labeled a ‘man-hater,’ but Swift stopped being afraid of that moniker and took full responsibility for her views. Once again, this added a personal dimension to her that fans and critics alike had not been privy to before. Social justice bloggers on the Internet began speaking about her, while an older crowd of women than her target audience normally was actively started following her career moves.

     Throughout the course of the McSwift team’s research into Swift’s marketing methods, the personal angle of her choices became more and more evident. She injected herself into every aspect of her career, particularly in the places where other artists would have remained purposefully detached to maintain some level of privacy. Swift, while most likely having those same concerns, did not hesitate to showcase her personality, as well as her views, in ways that artists before her have shied away from for fear of scrutiny or backlash. She allowed her fans, as well as those who had either never heard of her or had never taken an interest in her music previously, to get to know her likes and dislikes. She also let them have more of an inside look at her friendships with fellow celebrities, which let fans of those celebrities discover her in addition to allowing people to learn more about her through the type of people she chose to befriend. The biggest tactic she used was the fairly simple one of letting the public view her as a normal person instead of an untouchable celebrity whose star power has rendered her not relatable. Social networking sites aided her in this, allowing her to grow her online presence exponentially while at the same time increase record sales simply for being herself. The McSwift team’s research and presentation back this up with visual and statistical examples of Swift’s strategy, and based on the evidence there it is possible to conclude that her technique works. She was able to cement herself as an adult contemporary pop artist without many of the tricks normally employed in Hollywood to generate publicity and sales. Presenting herself as a person instead of a corporate entity enabled her to be seen as more of an accessible artist. In this world of social media interaction, Swift’s marketing strategy has the potential for more success than a corporation’s based upon the personhood present in each of her decisions. She is successful because she is herself in a very intentional, yet honest way.