Can You Apply the Taylor Swift Midas Touch to YOUR Business?
- Profit
- Dec 11, 2024
- 11 min read
5 Ways to Emulate T-Swizzle's Tested Strategies for Your Business Success!
Love her or hate her, it’s Taylor Swift’s world - and we’re all just living in it! Taylor Swift is an A-list Superstar of the highest caliber with nearly 100% name recognition and business reach across disparate languages and cultures worldwide. Even if you despise her music, politics, persona, or her “Swifties” (the nomenclature for her rabidly passionate and extremely devoted fan base), one cannot objectively deny her jaw-dropping success as a businesswoman.
Nonetheless, this is a business and career blog, so we are going to explore how the average small business owner or grassroots entrepreneur can apply the “Taylor Swift Effect” to grow one’s enterprise exponentially. However, before we dive into 5 ways you can apply the “Taylor Swift Effect” to grow your business, allow me to convince the haters and non-believers who dismiss Taylor Swift’s laurels as nothing but a lame, laughable, passing teeny-bopper fad. Such critics couldn’t be more wrong.
Statistical Dominance You don’t have to believe me solely based on my word. Feast your eyes on these stunning incomparable metrics from a cross-section of reputable sources...
🍿 $4.1 BILLION in earnings - and climbing - from Swift’s current “Eras Tour” concerts and theatrically released film. (Per a Washington Post report.) By the way, this is an industry record for a solo artist, besting other all-time music legends that have released popular concert documentaries including Madonna, Beyonce, and even the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
🍿 Aficionados are paying $500 to $7000 a pop - and often going into serious debt - to see Swift belt out her copious classics live and in living color. (Per Stylecaster.com) Get this, licensed resellers such as StubHub, originally listed prices for the Eras Tour only ranging from $49 to $499 per ticket! You should pray anything in your stock portfolio spikes in proportionate value like Swift’s recent concert tickets on the resale market!!
🍿 The “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” movie set new box office records across the board in multiple categories. Swift’s concert movie, which chronicles her current history-making tour, garnered $123 million in its opening weekend. Furthermore, this movie has achieved other amazing accolades like becoming the highest-grossing concert movie of all time, the highest first-day ticket sales in 2023, and the first concert movie EVER to be the #1 overall movie per box office receipts across America for 2 consecutive weeks.
To put those accomplishments and Swift’s undeniable impact on mainstream culture in perspective, the genre of concert films, even films featuring past music megastars, was considered a very niche submarket of the movie industry - at best! Perhaps, it was a nice side revenue stream for a pop icon to buy their next private jet. Still, Taylor Swift can be realistically credited for reviving the whole once moribund concert film genre back to prominence.
🍿 Even traditionally “straight male genres”, that one would assume are unimpacted or immune to the “Taylor Swift Effect”, such as the sports and TV goliath, the NFL, are feeling the Taylor tidal wave of a seemingly endless cash flow, rippling into their coffers from the curiosity of Swifties.
While there is backlash from a segment of NFL fans, the NFL is still acting like a lovestruck, spellbound teen virgin - infatuated with blazing Taylor Swift across our screens at a Kansas City Chiefs game every opportunity they get!
The backlash might be worth an exponentially increased profit margin for the Chiefs and their star tight end and Taylor Swift’s new boo, Travis Kelce. The newfound football enthusiasm from Swifties has translated into higher-than-normal ticket sales for Kansas City, triple the increase on search engines for Chiefs tickets, and Kelce jersey sales catapulted by nearly 400%. These surges came just because Taylor Swift was shown on NFL TV (in a non-speaking cameo capacity) merely supporting Travis Kelce from a luxury box.
Queen Midas Saves America From Economic Malaise
Taylor Swift is Queen Midas, as everything she touches turns to gold, platinum, or diamonds - and I am not just talking about her incredibly lucrative music career. CBS News reported the following headline, “The Federal Reserve says Taylor Swift's Eras Tour boosted the economy. One market research firm estimates she could add $5 billion.” Stop and consider the gravity of that statement. Seriously, I’ll wait.
Per the Washington Post, Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” is credited with providing an economic boost with more than just routine concert tickets, stadium concessions, and temporary jobs. Taylor Swift sold out the 70,240-seat SoFi Stadium for 6 performances, a feat no other non-NFL entity can claim.
NBC News Los Angeles estimates the 6 shows brought in an estimated $320 million to the local Angelino economy. Even more impressive, Los Angeles is not Podunk, USA - where Swift’s tour would likely be the biggest event in a small town or a mid-sized city by far. In LA, a wide variety of top-flight, mainstream entertainment options compete vigorously for the dollars of its millions of denizens. The sheer number of Swifties that swarm host cities boost ancillary spending for travel, hotels, restaurants, and local attractions to the tune of $5.7 billion - according to the Washington Post. Even that impressive stat, does not do Swift’s impact on local economies justice. Hotels are being booked to maximum capacity, securing restaurant reservations at trendy restaurants is a pipe dream, and parts of major U.S. cities are shut down - all due to Swift’s beyond-dedicated fanbase dominating localities when the Eras Tour rolls into town.
Some Swifties have posted their concert experiences on social media channels mere hours before giving birth. Can your business or best “million-dollar idea” inspire this level of fan devotion? Is there anything that Taylor Swift does to make herself such a monumental force in business, that you can replicate for your endeavors? What “Swiftian” strategies can be gold dust for your business?
5 Strategies Taylor Swift Implements - That CAN Be Applied to Your Business
1. Clever Marketing
Nobody in pop music leverages unique and novel marketing to pique interest better than Taylor Swift. Swift deftly writes cryptic liner notes to fuel speculation about her celebrity relationships; works with paparazzi to take “candid” photos to perpetuate her fun, perky good girl image; and donates $1989 in college tuition gifts - an amount that just happens to coincide with the title of her hallmark 1989 album. Marketing students take note!
Everyone is chasing to secure elusive “Earned Media” to spur business growth outside their normal customer bubble, while not having to add to their advertising budget. Swift does these fun marketing campaigns where fans decode “Easter eggs" to win prizes, unlock exclusive digital content, or solve puzzles that reveal future album releases and tour dates.
This breadcrumb strategy keeps loyalists engaged with Swift’s brand - in between new album releases and the launch of worldwide tours. Also, this synergistic strategy fuels online traffic for her digital content by creating fun games for her fans to participate in and stay plugged into her brand.
Taylor’s ingenious, fan-dubbed “Swiftmas” campaign, saw Swift personally wrap and send surprise packages to 32 lucky Tumblr followers. Those lucky recipients promptly posted their delighted reactions and gratitude to Taylor for her gifts on their social media platforms - causing a free viral sensation - that got picked up by mainstream media as a “feelgood holiday story”.
As this story went nationwide in 2014, this organic gesture (or stunt) nonchalantly and effortlessly earned Swift millions of dollars of free advertising for her brand.
Bottom Line: You must try new approaches to reach customers and fans outside your usual orbit in today’s fiercely competitive marketplace. Relentless, obvious self-promotion doesn’t cut it anymore.
2. VIP Customer Treatment
If you have never used a Groupon to subsidize a more luxurious “date night” out than you can typically afford, you might be surprised that some participating vendors - who willingly signed up with the discount intermediary to fortify their lagging business mind you - often treat new bargain hunting customers with disdain. Other times, the big ticket porterhouse steak that was on sale which enticed you to come in, is somehow conveniently “out of stock”, but there’s plenty of $75 lobster tails available to choose from as a substitute!
Besides shady businesses that implement bait-and-switch tactics to lure new patrons, how often has your regular barber, who has cut your hair for 10 years, given you a free haircut for your birthday, even after a decade of consistent patronage? These myopic vendors never went to Taylor Swift’s class on VIP customer/fan treatment. Contrast their approach to Taylor Swift, who routinely met with fans after nearly every performance of her earlier tours, totally free of charge. Swift has been known to randomly pop up at milestone events for diehard Swiftie bridal showers and weddings - and sometimes even brings her famous homemade cookies. Taylor has invited Swifties to her Nashville mansion for exclusive listening parties and sent private notes to celebrate their big life events, creating a genuine bond with personal involvement that is exceedingly rare for a pop superstar of her magnitude.
Perhaps, you can reward a valued customer who has brought you profitable referrals with a cool product or freebie as a thank you? Maybe, you can send a nice gift to a loyal customer’s wedding or remembrance flowers if they lost a loved one. A small gesture of unexpected appreciation goes a long way towards turning a loyal customer into a voluntary, unpaid advocate of your business. Bottom Line: Try to give back to your customers - at least as much as you promote to them - to build a genuine symbiotic relationship.
3. Creating a Community
From 1st hand experience, this is WAY harder to do than the experts will have you believe. It’s very time-consuming and frustrating to build an online following from scratch due to the innumerable competition from every imaginable source, even adorable cat videos! There’s only so much attention bandwidth people possess for your product or service on top of meeting their daily life demands.
That said, if you are depending on social media to grow your business or sell a product/service, you must engage with your customers, with more than just annoying promotional posts for your latest content, product, and service. (This also applies to me too. I have to be more timely in my social media responses so potential customers feel valued.)
Contrast this with Taylor Swift, who personally and frequently replies to fan posts, likes, and favorites random fans’ pics; and will repost devotees holding album artwork covers to give them a little shine or notoriety. Swifties feel another layer of kinship through sharing insider jokes, fun puzzles, fandom phrases, and overall lighthearted goofiness with their pop icon.
Even local staple businesses such as barber shops, pizza parlors, clothing stores, or marijuana dispensaries can create and cultivate offline community relationships by donating goods and services to the needy; offering kids and senior discounts; supporting school, community, and faith-based intramural sports teams or after-school programs; or joining forces to host a summer block party for residents to take pride in their neighborhood. Bottom Line: Do something other than being a circus carnival barker who seeks to hawk your latest wares! Teach or provide prospective customers something useful with your content, product, or service to build a more engaged audience.
4. Authentic Self Disclosure
Oftentimes, the difference between the competence, pricing, or expertise of two industry competitors is quite negligible. In those cases, the deciding factor can be how well the customer relates or connects with your business on an emotional level.
It most certainly applies to “soft, people-oriented” industries, such as entertainment, writing, social media influencing, marketing, advertising, sales, and mass media communication.
Even traditional, small brick-and-mortar businesses that provide routine, yet necessary services like car repairs, tax preparation, or electrical rewiring - can benefit from letting a prospective customer in on why your business exists or how the story of your business came into existence.
Perhaps, your business has been around for 4 generations and has been vital to the settling of your rural community. A customer who is a history buff could be regaled by your hundred-year-old photos and resonate with the story of your business. It could be as simple as a social or philosophical mission statement that resonates with the stereotypical beliefs of your target demographic.
T-Swizzle understands being aloof doesn’t win many hearts in the world of pop music. Fans on Reddit report feeling like they truly know Ms. Swift, through the intimate self-disclosure of hurtful celebrity breakups, fights involving multi-million dollar music rights lawsuits, advocating for fair royalties for musical artists against Spotify, fending off crazy stalkers, and battling a torrent of haters. Swifties relate to the relationship struggles Taylor has endured, akin to a kindred spirit. Swift is not afraid to share and be vulnerable with her audience, which makes her relatable, despite being a walking Fortune 500 corporation. Thus, when she is facing scrutiny - deserved or otherwise - Swifties rush to the defense of their “friend from afar”. Bottom Line: Authentic self-disclosure will build trust and make you and your business more relatable. Customers are more likely to support businesses they have an emotional connection with.
5. Being True to Your Authentic You
It’s smart to mimic industry leaders’ successes in your field. You should analyze what makes your competitors successful and determine if their business model, marketing strategies, and operations tactics can be applicable to your business. Then, put your innovative twist on your business to carve out your UVP - Unique Value Proposition - to the marketplace to establish your niche. Why reinvent the wheel when you don’t have to?
Keep in mind, that you won’t be able to recreate your competitors’ secret sauce, no matter how hard you try! The ingredients of your secret sauce are baked in the unique blend of values, goals, skills, and history that comprise who you are - and should ultimately forge your distinct entrepreneurial identity or business specialty.
Shake Shack has delicious burgers and Burger King has “flame-broiled” beef, but nobody can “out Big Mac” McDonalds on their signature staple meat sandwich. Same goes for you versus the world!
Profit’s Business UVP as an Example
The same holds for me in being true to my authentic self when it comes to this blog and my brand. While I could tout my distinguished academic credentials, name-drop the A-list celebrity interviews I have done, or write in an exclusively erudite language to impress readers with my extensive vernacular, I would not be utilizing my Unique Marketing Proposition in my industry to it’s fullest; the “jen ne sais quoi” of what nobody else but me can offer! Writing sugary, (yet meaningless) motivational pieces with stuffy parlance; posting (phony) promotional selifes in glamourous Gucci suits (when I feel ties symbolize corporate shackles); and masking my “School of Hard Knocks” values to not offend potential Ted Talk sponsors would dilute what could make me special in my field.
Such a crafted persona might look “professional” and status quo, but it would flop like a middle-aged flaccid tool at an all-inclusive Jamaican resort as a viable strategy for me - because it is inauthentic!
The readers, subscribers, or fans that ultimately (and hopefully) follow my business and career blog will be those who gravitate to, appreciate, and resonate with my innate “Sgt. Slaughter”, no-nonsense, often counterintuitive/contrarian, and sometimes irreverently entertaining approach to business and career advice.
Those who want a saccharine, hyper-optimistic, perpetually caffeinated approach to career consultation can follow Richard Simmons instead of me - and should!
Bottom Line: Even if you try your best, you can only be a decent facsimile of who someone else is. Embrace what truly makes you who you are, your unique you, because that’s the secret sauce that separates you - and your business - from your competitors.
Conclusion
Sure, an immense amount of God’s Blessing or luck (depending on your belief system) is part of the reason for Taylor Swift’s enormous success. We are all impacted by varying degrees of unearned fortuitousness or tragedies that are out of our control that changes the course of our lives. Still, fans and critics alike can agree that Taylor Swift has implemented numerous creative strategies that has taken her empire to the stratosphere. Small business owners and new entrepreneurs can emulate Swifts strategies with a personal twist to grow their businesses in ways they never imagined.
Comments