Walk the stage like a woman who owns it and has it all – that’s Taylor Swift for you. Watching her perform non-stop for 3 hours in Singapore, holding a 60000+ strong crowd singing to her tunes – was overwhelming.
I am not a Swift Fan, the 11-year old daughter is a hardcore Swiftie. She can rattle off any and every fact about Taylor Swift’s journey from country singer to the world’s biggest pop star today. She used every trick in the book, and not in the book (including making a Canva presentation on why it is was important to attend the concert), to convince me to buy tickets on a resale site at multi-X the original price, book plane tickets literally overnight and be there in person to witness the “Swift Effect”.
.
The “effect” it is. What I witnessed was a cult brand in action – fans swaying to every lyric, every tune, every move, singing along every word for three whole hours.
Taylor Swift is every inch the diva who owns her craft and her skill, walks tall and straight, takes charge and takes accountability for it all. Her magic and persona on stage is palpable as she epitomizes what “Executive Presence” is all about, her attitude dominating and endearing at the same time. It’s not often that you witness a 3-minute standing ovation to an artist, not even halfway through the show. This is history in the making, setting new paradigms for how a brand is built.
My brand building and business radar was in overdrive, absorbing all that was unfolding around me and connecting it to the happenings of the last many months since the Eras Tour mania started building up.
Taylor Swift is a business woman par excellence who’s changed paradigms in the music industry, rewritten rules and forced new rules, done the unthinkable (taking her music off Spotify, re-singing older songs strategically making Taylor versions, taking up for artists, trademarking phrases from the songs – more than 50 with 200 federal trademark registrations, and more)
The Eras Tour is a marketing master stroke, a visual master stroke and a creative master stroke. By creating artificial scarcity in the name of true fan love, the tour has gone house full at almost every show. Fans have traveled far and wide to attend, splurged money on merchandise, and bought tickets at multiple X of the original price points. The show itself ignites all senses – sound, light, color, drama, technology – all coming together to create a spectacular masterpiece that feels absolutely worth the money you spent, even for a Swift atheist like me.
Governments are falling over each other to host her in their country, the economic impact of her performances is more than what a lot of learned policy measures would probably do.
A cab driver in Singapore told me he made 2000 dollars on a single day during the tour week. The whole city was full of Swifties eating, partying, shopping and spending. The Australia tour week seemingly injected between 150-400 million dollars into the economy. The Singapore tour 300 million dollars, Japan 200 million dollars and the US a whopping 4 billion dollars across multiple cities.
Swift has a net worth of more than 1 billion dollars, a fan base equal to almost half the US population and multiple neo-words to her credit – Taylornomics, the Swift Effect, Taylor Economy, and more.
Politicians discuss her concerts at a regional summit, LinkedIn is full of posts about her brand building, her use of social media to transform fandom into a mania, use of data to analyse albums (she has 7 albums in top 40 of the US 200 charts), she’s added more to the economy of the places she has performed in than many learned monetary policy principles.
Taylor swift is a lesson in innovation and new-age marketing. She has leveraged the true power of social media and community building, creating a snowball effect that the best marketers dream of and aspire for. Swifties become friends the minute they meet, exchange bracelets at concerts (my daughter got 3, although she had none to exchange!!), and have multiple lines of merchandise “of the Swifties, by the Swifties, for the Swifties”. She’s kept herself relevant for more than a decade and half, adapting and adopting, connecting to her fans.
With her fearless pursuit of creative control, she is a relentless force, continually evolving her personal brand strategically and swiftly, for timing is of the essence when you are riding cultural waves. She has also used the uplift of women-oriented freedom of expression to advantage and is capitalising on the pulse adroitly.
Her impact extends to sports, with current boyfriend Travis Kelce’s team gaining from their sheer association and her presence in the games. But even more important, is the fact that with her running packed shows in stadiums, sports venue design is being discussed to maximize revenues during not only sports events but large entertainment events like her concerts.
Swift personifies great brand building through honesty, authenticity, vulnerability and purpose. This unique blend of talent, determination, innovation, confidence and fearless dedication to her craft is definitely a masterclass in leadership to all and also, I hope, to millions of women across the world. She shows the world that women can have it all, if only they set their mind to it.
Read More: Cleartrip strategically announces Dhoni as brand ambassador during IPL season