What lessons can marketers learn from Taylor Swift’s massive success?
In today's episode, Alan Hart talks with Kevin Evers, senior editor at Harvard Business Review and author of the book There’s Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift, about the branding and strategy lessons marketers can learn from the record-breaking artist. He reveals what prompted him to write about Swift and the commonalities he discovered between Taylor, Jeff Bezos, Jerry Garcia, The Beatles, and Reddit's true crime communities.
Kevin explains that since the start of her career, Taylor has created “blank s.css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}Mark as PlayedTranscript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Are you ready to go beyond the basics of marketing?
I'm Alan Hart and this is Marketing Beyond, where we talk about the questions that sparkchange and share ideas that challenge the status quo.
Join us as we explore the future of marketing and its endless potential.
think she really thinks like a marketer.
(00:29):
You know, a lot of artists, they put their music out and they want the music to speak foritself, but she's not one of those artists.
She really understands that communication is paramount and she builds stories around eachalbum and then makes sure that she's directly communicating why she's making those
changes.
And that's a big reason why she's able to adapt and grow.
(00:55):
Hey, today on the show, I've got Kevin Evers.
He's a senior editor at Harvard Business Review and author of the book, There's NothingLike This, The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift.
Came out on April 8th, 2025 and it's written or published by the Harvard Business ReviewPress.
On the show today, we talk about Taylor.
(01:16):
It's a fun topic to talk about as a marketer.
We talk about her brand, the brand building approach that she took the fan first.
approach to everything that she does, the pivots and risk that she's taken as a brand andthe lessons for us marketers and entertain the question, is she really a masterful
marketer?
(01:36):
So the answer you'll find out here shortly and the business lessons we all need to takeaway from her savviness running her business.
That and much more with Kevin Evers.
(01:57):
Kevin, welcome to the show.
Thanks Alan, it's great to be here.
Yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation.
It's going to be, I mean, normally like we're talking about business and we'll definitelytalk about business, but there's so much more exciting to talk about and people to talk
about.
But before I give it all away, I want to talk about you as a person.
And one of the things I learned about you, last conversation is you, you got a late startin life talking as a kid.
(02:23):
And for somebody that seems to be a writer, I don't know if that's a good thing or a badthing.
but just curious how that affected you.
What was it that like as a kid?
Yeah, I couldn't talk until I was five.
I don't really remember this.
This is what my mother tells me.
So I went through extensive speech therapy before and after that.
(02:44):
So I hope no one's judging me based on my speaking abilities here.
I was worried about confessing this because I'm on a podcast.
So I'm oh, he couldn't talk until he was five.
Okay, let's see what he's got now.
Yeah.
of the things that made me think as you told me this nugget is that maybe that's whyyou're a great interviewer or a great writer is that you're really from an early age.
(03:10):
You were just taking it all in.
Yeah, that's I guess that's all I cared about.
just I just wanted to observe and see what was going on I was like, know, I'll wait forthis talking stuff, you know, yeah
Yeah, no, that's awesome.
That's awesome.
Well, you are here, and you are now a senior editor at Harvard Business Review.
You've written a recent book that we'll talk about in a second.
But what was your professional path?
(03:30):
Where did you get your career start?
How did you end up where you are today at HBR?
I had very unconventional path.
I went to graduate school for film studies.
So I thought I'd get my PhD in film or maybe I'd go into the film industry, but I ended upworking at HBR.
And it's been great because I've really been able to use my creative abilities.
(03:54):
Being an editor is, it's not line editing.
It's really helping people develop their ideas and position their ideas for maximal.
market impact.
So yeah, nonlinear path, but I'm still using a lot of the skills that I gained in school.
I love it.
(04:15):
I love it.
And from film to business writing and editing, are now, it feels like in some ways youmight be merging these two things together, your latest book.
There's nothing like this, the strategic genius of Taylor Swift.
And I have to say, like, I'm sure thousands of people have thought about writing thisbook.
(04:38):
I much have thought about it.
I've thought about her as a marketer in general, but like, how did you come to thedecision to write this?
Yeah, it's a great question.
When I first came up with the idea there really weren't any books about Taylor Swift.
I couldn't believe it.
I'm like, no one has written a book about Taylor Swift.
That was before the Aris tour.
She announced the Aris tour.
And of course, now there are plenty of books about Taylor Swift.
(05:00):
But for me, it made total sense because she's a great songwriter, of course, and that'scontributed mightily to her success.
But you don't get this far.
You don't grow your popularity to this level.
over two decades into your career if you're not incredibly business savvy.
And I didn't approach this book any differently than I would if I was writing a book aboutSteve Jobs or Jeff Bezos.
(05:27):
The more I researched and the more I looked into Swift, the more and more I was impressedwith the decisions that she's made throughout her career.
Well, and I would say this is my own opinion.
should say that.
But I believe that Taylor Swift might be the greatest brand on the planet Earth.
(05:47):
And that's considering companies, causes, politicians, other celebrities.
think everyone you can think of.
How do you think about the power of her brand?
It's critical, right?
I think she's always known that her brand is based around intimacy and connection with heraudience and curiosity.
(06:08):
So everything she does is based on those components and the way she sings her songs,right?
The way that she conveys emotion from line to line, from word to word sometimes.
And then also the experiences she builds around those songs from her concerts that arealways, they tend to be
theatrical in nature, they're really built around each album and her social media impact,the way that she connects with fans, the way that she's always trying to build community
(06:40):
and to foster curiosity is all based on those original components of intimacy andconnection.
Yeah, I can.
I definitely agree with that.
One of the things you highlight is her fans first approach to building her following,building her brand to what it is today.
(07:03):
What does that look like as you kind of like evaluated her and what she's doing with herbrand in her business?
I'd say her customer obsession is her secret sauce, right?
Again, incredibly talented, a great songwriter, but talent isn't necessarily a scalableasset, but she knows that her fans are a scalable asset.
(07:23):
So she reminds me a lot of Jeff Bezos.
So Jeff Bezos had this great line in one of his shareholder letters, and I'm gonnaparaphrase here, but he said, our customers are delightfully dissatisfied.
They may tell us that they love our products.
But deep down, customers always want more.
And it's our job to continually delight them.
(07:44):
And that fits Taylor Swift to a T.
She's invited fans into her living room for listening parties.
That's an extreme gesture.
I mean, it's something that I wouldn't do.
I don't even answer the doorbell when it rings.
And here she is, the most famous person in the world, inviting, busing fans into herliving room.
And we saw this in the Ares tour too.
(08:05):
She could have played a
two hour show, her fans would have walked away delighted.
She could play the greatest hit show.
She had never done that before.
But instead she plays three and a half hours.
Her setlist spans over 40 songs.
And that had to come at a great emotional and physical toll because she's playing threenights in a row in a lot of cities.
Right.
(08:25):
But that's what she does.
She sets high expectations and then she exceeds those expectations.
And in most cases, she gets fans more than they maybe even deserve.
And I think that's
That fan obsession is a big part of why her fans stick around for so long and why she'sable to recruit new fans.
(08:46):
And one of the, I think you told me a nugget around the live streams and the fact thatsomehow that was being, if you will, of like enabling her fans to actually build followers
for themselves as well.
Could you expand on that a little bit?
I mean, this is something she's always done.
the internet changed fandoms forever, right?
(09:11):
And it's not that so much that fans want to listen to music.
Of course they do.
The music is really important, but they want things to do with that music.
And Swift has always understood that.
And you can see in the Aras tour, right?
She really encouraged fans to film the shows.
And one of the biggest parts about the Aras tour was live streams.
(09:34):
fans were at the concerts and they were live streaming those shows.
And then fans at home were watching grainy live streams of Taylor Swift concerts.
Now she could have monetized that, right?
She's a very smart business person.
She would have, of course she saw this was going on and she could have charged for her ownlive streams.
I mean, the Airis tour grossed over $2 billion.
(09:54):
She had enough money where she could have found a way to live stream the shows, but shedidn't.
She let the fans do it.
And so that gave them the power, but it also allowed those videos to spread more widely.
It reminded me of a technique that the Grateful Dead used back in the sixties.
They allowed their fans to record shows and then fans would share those shows and itincreased the fan community.
(10:23):
really bonded fans, but also allowed those fans to contribute to the mythology of theband.
where it the fans who were determining what songs were best, what versions of the songswere best.
And Taylor, being the smart business person that she is, realized that she doesn't have toreap as much monetary value as she can out of every aspect of her career, but by allowing
(10:45):
her fans to do the live streams, she created more engagement and community in the process.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that correlation, if you will, to the Grateful Dead and the bootleggingthat was going on with the recordings.
mean, magic happens in those moments too, right?
Like, especially with a band like Grateful Dead, that's such an element of uh riffing ontheir existing thing.
(11:11):
But the notion of how you talk about like being in their community together, bonding theirfans together, it's really powerful, really powerful.
And probably a really good example of
choosing not to make money on something that actually propels your brand forward.
propels the brand.
then of course, there's ways that she can monetize that later on because people are morewilling to buy merchandise and the more super fans she has, the more money that they'll
(11:37):
spend in the long term.
But she also does it in other ways than social media too.
I I compare it to the Grateful Dead and there's parts of her fan community and part of herstrategies that remind me of the Beatles, her understanding that she herself is just as
important as her music.
And she's always understood that.
There's also elements of true crime communities.
on Reddit, just these hyper curious communities that always speculate on what's happeningand what's going to come next.
(12:06):
And that's the Taylor Swift fan community.
Everything she does, what she wears, what she says, everything that she does on socialmedia is a source of endless speculation.
And she's the one that's fueling that.
It's fascinating.
Well, as brand leaders, we sometimes think about brand risk as something that at leastneeds to be mitigated, if not avoided at all costs.
(12:31):
But it seems like Swift has taken a different approach to risk.
Just using the first example is country music to pop, right?
So maybe curious as you've studied her and what she's done over the course of her career,like how do you think she's thinking about risk?
She's very protective of her brand, but there have been pretty pivotal moments in hercareer where she's taking calculated risks.
(13:01):
And the biggest one was her complete move to pop music.
She had always had a dual strategy after her first album, which was a pure country album.
She always had one leg in country music, one leg in pop.
So she'd do some country songs, and she'd also have some pop songs.
But when she moved directly to pop, full on pop, she was leaving country music completelybehind, right?
(13:25):
So she had cornered both markets and she was leaving one market behind.
It wasn't as if, yes, she was changing her sound.
She was changing the banjos and mandolins to 80 sounding synthesizers, but it was morethan the sound.
So instead of having a very classic adjacency strategy, which worked very well for her fora very long time, she decided, you know, I'm going to leave behind those relationships
(13:47):
that I develop in country music.
and going to go with pop.
Now, a lot of those decisions are personal decisions for her.
Even though on paper they seem like bad business decisions, I think she knows that as apersonal brand and as a songwriter, that's important for her to evolve her sound.
And if that's the sound that she's gravitating toward pop music, then that's reallyimportant for her growth as an artist.
(14:13):
And because she has such great storytelling abilities and she's able to really
Explain her change to her fans in personal terms.
Her fans go along for the ride.
Right, right.
It seems to be that notion of not only doing it, like making the shift, but tell it toyour point, telling the story to your audience, to your fans about why and how this is
(14:37):
gonna be different.
She did this with 1989, which was her big pop album.
This was her big transformation.
And at the time, there was so much going on in the music industry.
Streaming was becoming a very popular way to listen to music.
And bands and artists were trying to find so many innovative ways to catch people'sattention.
(14:58):
This is when U2 partnered with Apple, and everyone woke up and had a U2 album on theirphone.
Jay-Z did something with Samsung.
the time, Beyonce also surprise dropped an album.
And instead of trying to find a new way to release music, Taylor decided to have aone-on-one with her fans.
(15:21):
She hosted a live stream that was simulcast on ABC and she, there was no cohost.
It was just Taylor, like an over caffeinated morning TV host, talking to her fans andexplaining why she was making this big transition.
pop music.
And of course that was shared widely online.
People watched it.
(15:43):
And since she had fans in the audience and she was talking directly to fans in verypersonal and direct terms, saying this is about personal growth for her, her fans, even
though some thought the move to pop music, they didn't like it.
And it was controversial.
Most of her fans
along.
That's a pretty powerful pivot and honestly a pretty good case study for marketersthinking about moving their brand from one place to another and how potentially to bring
(16:11):
your customers, i.e.
your audience along for the ride.
uh
think she really thinks like a marketer.
know, a lot of artists, they put their music out and they want the music to speak foritself.
But she's not, she's not one of those artists.
She really understands that communication is paramount and she builds stories around eachalbum and then make sure that she's directly communicating why she's making those changes.
(16:39):
And that's a, that's a big reason why she's able to adapt and grow.
Right.
Yeah, because fans after a while fans get very they have strong opinions, very strongopinions, right?
And sometimes they don't like it when the artist changed too much.
Go to any online fan community when an artist makes a big pivot and you're going to find alot of negativity and you will find some negativity when Swift makes these pivots.
(17:03):
But because her storytelling is so strong, because her communication is so strong andbecause she thinks like a marketer, she's able to build the right stories around those
changes.
Well, and I was going to ask you this question, but I think you kind of already answeredit.
I've always looked at her from, from the outside thinking, man, she's masterful atmarketing.
(17:25):
But then also like wondering and scratching my head, like really is she, or is the famearound her brand just such that like, it feels like she permeates every aspect of culture.
It seems to me that you think that she is, she is thinking like a marketer.
And that was...
For sure.
I mean, it's probably a both and, to be honest.
(17:48):
Right?
I mean, the more famous you are, there is cumulative advantage where it's like the moresuccessful you become, then success begets more success.
But on the flip side of that, the more famous you are and the more eyes on you, the higherthe risk, right?
Everything she does is scrutinized, right?
And I think sometimes we look back, she's executed so well on a lot of this stuff that...
(18:12):
It seems easy and it doesn't seem risky.
But I'm always trying to put myself in her shoes.
Like that big move to pop music.
If she didn't execute it, that album wasn't good.
I she would have been skewered in the media and her fans would have hated it too.
So even though she gets big and even though she's extremely popular, she does takecalculated risks that time.
(18:38):
And I do think we have to give her her flowers for that because
I think the more successful you are, the harder it is to make those big moves, but she'swilling to do it.
Yeah.
Well, and I think you mentioned something to me too, which is like she capitalized oncertain trends, like say the rise of social media as social media was taking off.
(18:59):
But today maybe is less of her in her marketing mix today than it was in the past.
So she it sounds like she's also refining.
She's always putting out great content, but she's refining like where that content existsin the world, just like
any marketer listening to this show, frankly.
(19:19):
Her social media strategy has changed pretty dramatically.
When she was first starting out, I her rise as an artist coincided with the rise of socialmedia.
She wasn't successful because of social media.
She was successful because she used those tools really well.
This was back in 2006.
So Facebook was still on college campuses.
MySpace was the major social media platform at the time.
(19:41):
YouTube in its infancy.
But it was very early on in social media, but Swift,
I always knew that, and this is something the Beatles did too, that me as a person, me asa tailor is just as important as my music.
So I need to sell myself just as much as my music.
(20:02):
And I need to sell myself as a peer, not necessarily as a star.
But these days, it's pretty different.
She's not chronically online anymore, right?
She
doesn't really go on Instagram anymore or TikTok, right?
And I think a big reason for that is she doesn't really need to, right?
(20:27):
She's taken a scare.
She's all about scarcity now, right?
The less that she's around, the more her fans engage, the more they're curious and themore they speculate, right?
So she's in a prized position right now.
I'm not sure other artists could get away with that, especially new artists.
You really need to be on social media directly connecting with your fans.
(20:47):
But since Swift had been doing it, has been doing this for 15, 20 years, and she has builtthat fan community and she has taught that fan community how to act, which is to be
extremely curious and to speculate about everything she's doing.
She's able to take a step back.
Right.
I think this also coincides with the rise of TikTok.
(21:08):
Cause TikTok really allows fans to be co-creators.
uh in an artist's career.
In the Eris tour, there's a study that showed at the peak of the Eris tour, between 200 to300 million videos reviewed a day of Taylor Swift.
(21:29):
So at the same time, she's putting out a ton of content.
She's releasing a lot of albums.
She was on the Eris tour, but she could take a step back and let her fans do the work andthe evangelizing for her.
Yeah, I mean it if I track kind of like that to like what's happened in the marketingworld, right?
Like push into organic social which she did at the at the right time.
(21:54):
Yep, the rise of influencers and new channels and her ability to leverage fans as likeinfluencers to help get her message out into the world and the notion that you talk about
like her brand is at a level at this point where
She doesn't necessarily need to do the micro anymore.
(22:15):
And it needs to be kind of like reinvesting in this brand building top of funnel massawareness because she appeals to, I mean, largely everyone, I'm sure there's some haters
out there, but like largely everyone is appeal, you she appeals to.
And so like, you know, optimizing her mix for now at the stage of her being a big brand, abig global brand, and then leveraging others through these influencers of her fans and.
(22:41):
et cetera.
It's pretty astute marketing, not just a good marketer, like really astute marketer.
Yeah.
And she doesn't, every opportunity that she has or any appearance, she's always droppingsome sort of hint.
So she just received an award at the iHeart Music Awards and she wore a necklace and ithad a snake emblem on it.
(23:04):
And that's a big symbol in the Swift world that refers to her album reputation.
And that's one of the albums that she's planning to rerecord and to release.
And her fans have been speculating about this for two years and she keeps dropping hints,keeps dropping hints.
So every time she makes this a random appearance, all of her fans are like, oh, what doesthat plaid dress mean?
(23:26):
What does that necklace mean?
Everything has some kind of meaning even when it doesn't.
And yeah, she's a master at that.
She knows that everything she does will be scrutinized.
So she just drops little, little hints.
And then the fans go crazy online.
Well, I think in the last couple of seasons of the NFL, she's captivated us in entirelynew worlds of live sports showing, live sports viewing.
(23:54):
uh
She's infiltrated the last monocultural event that we have, which is football, NFLfootball.
We live in a world of a million niches at this point, but football is the only thing thatreally brings us together.
And I don't think she was calculated about this.
I think she just wants to support her boyfriend, but the effects have worked.
(24:18):
It has only increased her popularity.
It's brought on some haters too, don't get me wrong.
Of course, of course.
mean, you can't have success without haters.
So yeah.
And I wish Travis all the best, but she does write about a lot of breakup songs.
I'll just leave that one there.
He'll be perfectly fine.
(24:41):
Yeah, I think he'll be death just fine.
But I do hope the best for both of them.
But it does make me as a dad of a teenage girl, not that she is, but we hear a lot ofTaylor Swift songs.
There's a lot of breakups in those songs.
Travis, be careful, man.
Do what you need to do.
But I think one of the things we've been talking about is she's a great marketer.
(25:02):
But I think beyond just the success that she's had in marketing and building a brand islike her business savvy is uncanny as well.
Just curious, like, I you've written a whole book about her career.
Like, what were some of the takeaways that you took away?
since you are both a business writer and you're writing about this cultural icon, curiouswhat the business lessons were that you took away.
(25:26):
most important one, and this goes back to her early career when she was 13 or 14 yearsold, is a classic entrepreneurial story.
She seized an opportunity that other people had ignored or didn't think existed.
She was a teen girl trying to make it in country music.
2004, 2005, 2006, when her first album came out, the consensus was, nope, we can't dothis.
(25:52):
She wanted to her own songs.
which for a girl her age, not something that Nashville was willing to do.
She wanted to write songs for an audience of her peers, teenage girls.
Nashville, the consensus was that audience doesn't exist, and she wanted to put out analbum as soon as possible.
Most people told her she had to wait until she was 18, at least.
(26:14):
But she persisted.
Still, a lot of people in country music are like, this isn't gonna work.
And they were right, because the data and past experiences showed
that someone like her probably wouldn't break out.
At the time, 80 % of hits on country radio were performed by men, and men were played fourto five times more than women on country radio.
(26:37):
And there's no way you could be successful in 2006 in country music without having the DJsand programmers playing your songs on country radio.
There's no way.
And Swift persisted, right?
She was really close to that audience.
She knew that her peers liked her songs and she ended up with finding a record label.
(27:00):
The head of that record label believed in her vision.
Of course, the rest is history, but they really ended up creating their own category,right?
They were going after an audience that everyone else had ignored.
And even though they had the data to show that those country music executives wereprobably right, I think Swift and Scott Prashetta, the head of her label,
(27:23):
thought otherwise.
And because of that, she broke out on country music because she was doing something thatother people weren't doing.
It's a great way to talk about differentiation in a crowded category and pushing forward,pushing forward to your point like an entrepreneur would anyway.
Anyway, she is, like I said at the outset, I've admired what she's been able to accomplishfrom an outsider's purview and from somebody that's in the marketing world and just kind
(27:55):
of in all of the brand that she's built.
pretty amazing.
I mean, at this point, her popularity has reached absurd levels.
I mean, absurd in a good way.
In 2024 alone, she represented close to 2 % of the total music market, just her albums,just her streams.
(28:16):
And it doesn't include the box office for the AeroStore, it doesn't include merchandisesales.
So if it did, those numbers would be much higher.
And the AeroStore grossed
over $2 billion.
That's nearly twice as much as the second place concert, which was Coldplay's Music of theSpheres.
But she's not a superstar.
I don't even think she's a megastar.
(28:37):
I don't really know what to call her because she's exponentially more successful andpopular than even superstar artists at this point.
It feels like it's on the order of magnitude of galactic star, as far as we know today,there's not life outside of Earth.
For sure.
Yeah, I know.
know.
someone out there can come up with a great name for what she is right now, please tell mebecause I don't know what that is.
(29:01):
I agree.
agree.
Well, one of the things we do on the show is get to know you a little bit better.
And, we know you had a late start talking.
You've definitely made up for it at this point in life.
But has there been an experience of your past that defines or makes up who you are today?
Great question.
(29:22):
It's not a direct moment, but I had a change of heart about my own creative process.
think growing up, my creative process is very non-linear, right?
I'm not a outline and just write the thing type of person.
My creative process is all over the place.
(29:43):
If anyone wants to know what my creative process looks like, look up Dostoevsky'snotebooks.
Right.
And this is a big moment for me when I looked at his notebooks because his notebooks lookcrazy.
There's he's writing on all sides of the page.
Some of it's upside down.
There's arrows being drawn over the place.
Like you can't make sense of it.
And I was like, I feel seen now.
(30:04):
That's I'm not comparing my I'm not going to write, you know, you know, I can't write likeDostoevsky, but I'm not going to write crime and punishment.
But I came to that real estate.
was like, you know what?
That's my creative process and that's the way that I need to do things.
It's not a weakness, it's not a deficiency.
And the first time I realized that, a burden was released because after that, was justtrying to find ways to make that work for me and trying to find processes to allow the
(30:38):
chaos and allow the messiness to be strengths.
Love it.
Is there any advice you'd give your younger self if you're starting this journey all overagain?
Say it's all going to be okay.
Don't be too hard on yourself.
I'm sure a lot of people say that, but when we're younger, I can see this with my eightyear old daughter.
She's really hard on herself.
(30:59):
She doesn't do well on the test or she doesn't know the answer.
It's hard for her and it's a long journey, right?
And it's all about what you learn, not necessarily how you do.
Just keep going.
Yeah.
No, I think it's a great, it's a great advice.
And he made me think of something that's happened just in the last couple of weeks with mydaughter is 17.
(31:23):
I'm at a different, different stage of this, struggling with pre-calc this year, APpre-calc.
And I, she finally got a test back this week, made an A, which is awesome.
Right.
You know, I told her, you know, beyond just the A, I'm so proud of the fact that you'vestuck with this, right?
Like you've really grind this out.
(31:45):
And that should be the thing you're most proud about at this point.
So the A is great, icing on top, but.
My daughter, she loves to dance, but she's doing gymnastics this year for the first time.
And she's been trying to do a cartwheel for a year and a half at this point.
And she finally nailed one the other day.
(32:06):
was this moment of joy for everyone.
She's been working so hard and then she finally did it.
It's like, see, that's like the hard work paid off.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
I have to ask, what does she think about you writing about Taylor Swift?
Does she know Taylor Swift at eight?
She loves Taylor Swift.
She's a huge Taylor Swift fan.
(32:29):
She's always loved adult music.
When she was younger, she loved Pro Jam.
I mean, when she was like four months old.
There's one Pro Jam.
in my language, yes.
Pro Jam song wishlist was a we muscle we probably listened to that song over 2,000 timesbecause it the there's something about the beat of that song and Eddie Vedder's lyrics and
(32:51):
the tone of his voice that would calm her down and she was a crier she cried a lot so yeahwe there was one car ride we listened to that song about six hours straight so now now
she's in the Taylor Swift which is great I took her to the Aris tour when she was six andwe won again when she was eight so
Yeah, just if there's anyone out there who has a young daughter and Taylor Swift toursagain, I'd highly recommend going because you'll get major street cred with your daughter.
(33:19):
You'll get major dad points and it's a great place to walk into because everyone'sswooning because you're the dad with your daughter.
Yeah, it's like being on a parade float.
Everyone loves it.
So yeah, my daughter is very excited about me writing a book about Taylor Swift.
(33:39):
I bet, now that you've got extra cool points now, so.
I'm if there's a topic either you're trying to learn more about or something you thinkmarketers need to be learning more about today.
really curious about the collective content that's out there these days and how thatimpacts everyone.
(34:03):
I mean, we always look at it from a listener perspective.
It's hard to figure out what we should watch, what we should listen to because everyoneelse is watching different stuff or listening to different stuff.
But as a book editor that's always looking for projects,
If we're trying to figure out what projects break through and which ones don't, we're inan extreme attention economy right now.
(34:28):
And I'm really curious about how to navigate that as a creator, but also as someone whoputs products out into the world in the form of books.
Yeah, no, it's a really important point.
mean, there's no good answer if you're a brand right now.
You still have to produce content, right?
(34:50):
And in some cases, the content you're talking about too, like the stuff that's out therethat you want to somehow bring your brand closer to, because it represents culture and
you're trying to connect in that space.
It's a definite challenge, especially with all the streaming platforms on top ofeverything.
Like just as one example, it's
A lot to figure out in coming years, for sure.
(35:11):
I always look at on Halloween when I was younger on Halloween, like you could tell whateveryone was dressed as, as a Marvel character.
Everyone had the same touch points.
But when my kids go trick or treating now and kids come to the house, I have no idea whomost of the kids are because they're all watching different stuff.
Right.
Yeah, it's funny.
(35:31):
Well, are there any trends or subcultures that you follow you think other people shouldtake notice of?
Well, I mean, the biggest, the biggest subculture, I don't know if I'd call it asubculture at this point, but the Taylor Swift fandom, I'd encourage everyone to go on
TikTok or go on Instagram reels and start finding some fan sites, some fan accounts andlet the algorithm do its thing.
(35:56):
And you really need to see it to believe it.
All the clowning that goes around.
The true crime-esque speculation that goes on is pretty extreme and fun to participate in.
But there's also so much about the fandom that's really smart.
Just the lyrical analysis, the deep dives in the songs, the knowledge of Taylor isprofound.
(36:22):
So I'd encourage anyone to check out that Taylor Swift superfan sites subculture and seewhat it's all about.
Love it, love it.
Last question for you.
What do you think is the largest opportunity or threat facing marketers today?
That's a great question.
I think it goes back to the fact that there's so much content out there.
(36:47):
I'm sure it's a question that every marketer asks themselves when they wake up.
How do we stick out in this marketplace?
And this is what I think about as a book editor all the time.
There's so many books out there.
How do we position these books?
How do we build stories around these books that really makes them stand out when there's
thousands upon thousands of business books released every year.
(37:09):
That's a really important point.
Standing out in a crowded marketplace.
ah Well, Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thank you for writing this book.
Because now I can go deep dive into the business lessons related to Taylor Swift.
So hope everyone that's listening to this also checks it out.
But thank you for coming on the show.
Thank you.
(37:29):
That was great.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent theviews, thoughts, and opinions of Deloitte.
Material and information presented here is for general information purposes only and doesnot imply endorsement or opposition to any specific company, product, or service.
(37:51):
Hi, it's Alan again.
Marketing Beyond is a Deloitte digital podcast.
It's created and produced by me with close production support from Sam Robertson.
If you're new to Marketing Beyond, please feel free to write us a review and subscribe onyour favorite listening platform.
I also invite you to explore the other Deloitte digital podcast at deloitte digital.comslash us slash podcast and share the show with your friends and colleagues.
(38:19):
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can contact me at marketingbeyond at Deloitte.com.
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I'm Alan Hart, and this is Marketing Beyond.
Are you ready to go beyond the basics of marketing?
I'm Alan Hart and this is Marketing Beyond, where we talk about the questions that sparkchange and share ideas that challenge the status quo.
Join us as we explore the future of marketing and its endless potential.
think she really thinks like a marketer.
(00:29):
You know, a lot of artists, they put their music out and they want the music to speak foritself, but she's not one of those artists.
She really understands that communication is paramount and she builds stories around eachalbum and then makes sure that she's directly communicating why she's making those
changes.
And that's a big reason why she's able to adapt and grow.
(00:55):
Hey, today on the show, I've got Kevin Evers.
He's a senior editor at Harvard Business Review and author of the book, There's NothingLike This, The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift.
Came out on April 8th, 2025 and it's written or published by the Harvard Business ReviewPress.
On the show today, we talk about Taylor.
(01:16):
It's a fun topic to talk about as a marketer.
We talk about her brand, the brand building approach that she took the fan first.
approach to everything that she does, the pivots and risk that she's taken as a brand andthe lessons for us marketers and entertain the question, is she really a masterful
marketer?
(01:36):
So the answer you'll find out here shortly and the business lessons we all need to takeaway from her savviness running her business.
That and much more with Kevin Evers.
(01:57):
Kevin, welcome to the show.
Thanks Alan, it's great to be here.
Yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation.
It's going to be, I mean, normally like we're talking about business and we'll definitelytalk about business, but there's so much more exciting to talk about and people to talk
about.
But before I give it all away, I want to talk about you as a person.
And one of the things I learned about you, last conversation is you, you got a late startin life talking as a kid.
(02:23):
And for somebody that seems to be a writer, I don't know if that's a good thing or a badthing.
but just curious how that affected you.
What was it that like as a kid?
Yeah, I couldn't talk until I was five.
I don't really remember this.
This is what my mother tells me.
So I went through extensive speech therapy before and after that.
(02:44):
So I hope no one's judging me based on my speaking abilities here.
I was worried about confessing this because I'm on a podcast.
So I'm oh, he couldn't talk until he was five.
Okay, let's see what he's got now.
Yeah.
of the things that made me think as you told me this nugget is that maybe that's whyyou're a great interviewer or a great writer is that you're really from an early age.
(03:10):
You were just taking it all in.
Yeah, that's I guess that's all I cared about.
just I just wanted to observe and see what was going on I was like, know, I'll wait forthis talking stuff, you know, yeah
Yeah, no, that's awesome.
That's awesome.
Well, you are here, and you are now a senior editor at Harvard Business Review.
You've written a recent book that we'll talk about in a second.
But what was your professional path?
(03:30):
Where did you get your career start?
How did you end up where you are today at HBR?
I had very unconventional path.
I went to graduate school for film studies.
So I thought I'd get my PhD in film or maybe I'd go into the film industry, but I ended upworking at HBR.
And it's been great because I've really been able to use my creative abilities.
(03:54):
Being an editor is, it's not line editing.
It's really helping people develop their ideas and position their ideas for maximal.
market impact.
So yeah, nonlinear path, but I'm still using a lot of the skills that I gained in school.
I love it.
(04:15):
I love it.
And from film to business writing and editing, are now, it feels like in some ways youmight be merging these two things together, your latest book.
There's nothing like this, the strategic genius of Taylor Swift.
And I have to say, like, I'm sure thousands of people have thought about writing thisbook.
(04:38):
I much have thought about it.
I've thought about her as a marketer in general, but like, how did you come to thedecision to write this?
Yeah, it's a great question.
When I first came up with the idea there really weren't any books about Taylor Swift.
I couldn't believe it.
I'm like, no one has written a book about Taylor Swift.
That was before the Aris tour.
She announced the Aris tour.
And of course, now there are plenty of books about Taylor Swift.
(05:00):
But for me, it made total sense because she's a great songwriter, of course, and that'scontributed mightily to her success.
But you don't get this far.
You don't grow your popularity to this level.
over two decades into your career if you're not incredibly business savvy.
And I didn't approach this book any differently than I would if I was writing a book aboutSteve Jobs or Jeff Bezos.
(05:27):
The more I researched and the more I looked into Swift, the more and more I was impressedwith the decisions that she's made throughout her career.
Well, and I would say this is my own opinion.
should say that.
But I believe that Taylor Swift might be the greatest brand on the planet Earth.
(05:47):
And that's considering companies, causes, politicians, other celebrities.
think everyone you can think of.
How do you think about the power of her brand?
It's critical, right?
I think she's always known that her brand is based around intimacy and connection with heraudience and curiosity.
(06:08):
So everything she does is based on those components and the way she sings her songs,right?
The way that she conveys emotion from line to line, from word to word sometimes.
And then also the experiences she builds around those songs from her concerts that arealways, they tend to be
theatrical in nature, they're really built around each album and her social media impact,the way that she connects with fans, the way that she's always trying to build community
(06:40):
and to foster curiosity is all based on those original components of intimacy andconnection.
Yeah, I can.
I definitely agree with that.
One of the things you highlight is her fans first approach to building her following,building her brand to what it is today.
(07:03):
What does that look like as you kind of like evaluated her and what she's doing with herbrand in her business?
I'd say her customer obsession is her secret sauce, right?
Again, incredibly talented, a great songwriter, but talent isn't necessarily a scalableasset, but she knows that her fans are a scalable asset.
(07:23):
So she reminds me a lot of Jeff Bezos.
So Jeff Bezos had this great line in one of his shareholder letters, and I'm gonnaparaphrase here, but he said, our customers are delightfully dissatisfied.
They may tell us that they love our products.
But deep down, customers always want more.
And it's our job to continually delight them.
(07:44):
And that fits Taylor Swift to a T.
She's invited fans into her living room for listening parties.
That's an extreme gesture.
I mean, it's something that I wouldn't do.
I don't even answer the doorbell when it rings.
And here she is, the most famous person in the world, inviting, busing fans into herliving room.
And we saw this in the Ares tour too.
(08:05):
She could have played a
two hour show, her fans would have walked away delighted.
She could play the greatest hit show.
She had never done that before.
But instead she plays three and a half hours.
Her setlist spans over 40 songs.
And that had to come at a great emotional and physical toll because she's playing threenights in a row in a lot of cities.
Right.
(08:25):
But that's what she does.
She sets high expectations and then she exceeds those expectations.
And in most cases, she gets fans more than they maybe even deserve.
And I think that's
That fan obsession is a big part of why her fans stick around for so long and why she'sable to recruit new fans.
(08:46):
And one of the, I think you told me a nugget around the live streams and the fact thatsomehow that was being, if you will, of like enabling her fans to actually build followers
for themselves as well.
Could you expand on that a little bit?
I mean, this is something she's always done.
the internet changed fandoms forever, right?
(09:11):
And it's not that so much that fans want to listen to music.
Of course they do.
The music is really important, but they want things to do with that music.
And Swift has always understood that.
And you can see in the Aras tour, right?
She really encouraged fans to film the shows.
And one of the biggest parts about the Aras tour was live streams.
(09:34):
fans were at the concerts and they were live streaming those shows.
And then fans at home were watching grainy live streams of Taylor Swift concerts.
Now she could have monetized that, right?
She's a very smart business person.
She would have, of course she saw this was going on and she could have charged for her ownlive streams.
I mean, the Airis tour grossed over $2 billion.
(09:54):
She had enough money where she could have found a way to live stream the shows, but shedidn't.
She let the fans do it.
And so that gave them the power, but it also allowed those videos to spread more widely.
It reminded me of a technique that the Grateful Dead used back in the sixties.
They allowed their fans to record shows and then fans would share those shows and itincreased the fan community.
(10:23):
really bonded fans, but also allowed those fans to contribute to the mythology of theband.
where it the fans who were determining what songs were best, what versions of the songswere best.
And Taylor, being the smart business person that she is, realized that she doesn't have toreap as much monetary value as she can out of every aspect of her career, but by allowing
(10:45):
her fans to do the live streams, she created more engagement and community in the process.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that correlation, if you will, to the Grateful Dead and the bootleggingthat was going on with the recordings.
mean, magic happens in those moments too, right?
Like, especially with a band like Grateful Dead, that's such an element of uh riffing ontheir existing thing.
(11:11):
But the notion of how you talk about like being in their community together, bonding theirfans together, it's really powerful, really powerful.
And probably a really good example of
choosing not to make money on something that actually propels your brand forward.
propels the brand.
then of course, there's ways that she can monetize that later on because people are morewilling to buy merchandise and the more super fans she has, the more money that they'll
(11:37):
spend in the long term.
But she also does it in other ways than social media too.
I I compare it to the Grateful Dead and there's parts of her fan community and part of herstrategies that remind me of the Beatles, her understanding that she herself is just as
important as her music.
And she's always understood that.
There's also elements of true crime communities.
on Reddit, just these hyper curious communities that always speculate on what's happeningand what's going to come next.
(12:06):
And that's the Taylor Swift fan community.
Everything she does, what she wears, what she says, everything that she does on socialmedia is a source of endless speculation.
And she's the one that's fueling that.
It's fascinating.
Well, as brand leaders, we sometimes think about brand risk as something that at leastneeds to be mitigated, if not avoided at all costs.
(12:31):
But it seems like Swift has taken a different approach to risk.
Just using the first example is country music to pop, right?
So maybe curious as you've studied her and what she's done over the course of her career,like how do you think she's thinking about risk?
She's very protective of her brand, but there have been pretty pivotal moments in hercareer where she's taking calculated risks.
(13:01):
And the biggest one was her complete move to pop music.
She had always had a dual strategy after her first album, which was a pure country album.
She always had one leg in country music, one leg in pop.
So she'd do some country songs, and she'd also have some pop songs.
But when she moved directly to pop, full on pop, she was leaving country music completelybehind, right?
(13:25):
So she had cornered both markets and she was leaving one market behind.
It wasn't as if, yes, she was changing her sound.
She was changing the banjos and mandolins to 80 sounding synthesizers, but it was morethan the sound.
So instead of having a very classic adjacency strategy, which worked very well for her fora very long time, she decided, you know, I'm going to leave behind those relationships
(13:47):
that I develop in country music.
and going to go with pop.
Now, a lot of those decisions are personal decisions for her.
Even though on paper they seem like bad business decisions, I think she knows that as apersonal brand and as a songwriter, that's important for her to evolve her sound.
And if that's the sound that she's gravitating toward pop music, then that's reallyimportant for her growth as an artist.
(14:13):
And because she has such great storytelling abilities and she's able to really
Explain her change to her fans in personal terms.
Her fans go along for the ride.
Right, right.
It seems to be that notion of not only doing it, like making the shift, but tell it toyour point, telling the story to your audience, to your fans about why and how this is
(14:37):
gonna be different.
She did this with 1989, which was her big pop album.
This was her big transformation.
And at the time, there was so much going on in the music industry.
Streaming was becoming a very popular way to listen to music.
And bands and artists were trying to find so many innovative ways to catch people'sattention.
(14:58):
This is when U2 partnered with Apple, and everyone woke up and had a U2 album on theirphone.
Jay-Z did something with Samsung.
the time, Beyonce also surprise dropped an album.
And instead of trying to find a new way to release music, Taylor decided to have aone-on-one with her fans.
(15:21):
She hosted a live stream that was simulcast on ABC and she, there was no cohost.
It was just Taylor, like an over caffeinated morning TV host, talking to her fans andexplaining why she was making this big transition.
pop music.
And of course that was shared widely online.
People watched it.
(15:43):
And since she had fans in the audience and she was talking directly to fans in verypersonal and direct terms, saying this is about personal growth for her, her fans, even
though some thought the move to pop music, they didn't like it.
And it was controversial.
Most of her fans
along.
That's a pretty powerful pivot and honestly a pretty good case study for marketersthinking about moving their brand from one place to another and how potentially to bring
(16:11):
your customers, i.e.
your audience along for the ride.
uh
think she really thinks like a marketer.
know, a lot of artists, they put their music out and they want the music to speak foritself.
But she's not, she's not one of those artists.
She really understands that communication is paramount and she builds stories around eachalbum and then make sure that she's directly communicating why she's making those changes.
(16:39):
And that's a, that's a big reason why she's able to adapt and grow.
Right.
Yeah, because fans after a while fans get very they have strong opinions, very strongopinions, right?
And sometimes they don't like it when the artist changed too much.
Go to any online fan community when an artist makes a big pivot and you're going to find alot of negativity and you will find some negativity when Swift makes these pivots.
(17:03):
But because her storytelling is so strong, because her communication is so strong andbecause she thinks like a marketer, she's able to build the right stories around those
changes.
Well, and I was going to ask you this question, but I think you kind of already answeredit.
I've always looked at her from, from the outside thinking, man, she's masterful atmarketing.
(17:25):
But then also like wondering and scratching my head, like really is she, or is the famearound her brand just such that like, it feels like she permeates every aspect of culture.
It seems to me that you think that she is, she is thinking like a marketer.
And that was...
For sure.
I mean, it's probably a both and, to be honest.
(17:48):
Right?
I mean, the more famous you are, there is cumulative advantage where it's like the moresuccessful you become, then success begets more success.
But on the flip side of that, the more famous you are and the more eyes on you, the higherthe risk, right?
Everything she does is scrutinized, right?
And I think sometimes we look back, she's executed so well on a lot of this stuff that...
(18:12):
It seems easy and it doesn't seem risky.
But I'm always trying to put myself in her shoes.
Like that big move to pop music.
If she didn't execute it, that album wasn't good.
I she would have been skewered in the media and her fans would have hated it too.
So even though she gets big and even though she's extremely popular, she does takecalculated risks that time.
(18:38):
And I do think we have to give her her flowers for that because
I think the more successful you are, the harder it is to make those big moves, but she'swilling to do it.
Yeah.
Well, and I think you mentioned something to me too, which is like she capitalized oncertain trends, like say the rise of social media as social media was taking off.
(18:59):
But today maybe is less of her in her marketing mix today than it was in the past.
So she it sounds like she's also refining.
She's always putting out great content, but she's refining like where that content existsin the world, just like
any marketer listening to this show, frankly.
(19:19):
Her social media strategy has changed pretty dramatically.
When she was first starting out, I her rise as an artist coincided with the rise of socialmedia.
She wasn't successful because of social media.
She was successful because she used those tools really well.
This was back in 2006.
So Facebook was still on college campuses.
MySpace was the major social media platform at the time.
(19:41):
YouTube in its infancy.
But it was very early on in social media, but Swift,
I always knew that, and this is something the Beatles did too, that me as a person, me asa tailor is just as important as my music.
So I need to sell myself just as much as my music.
(20:02):
And I need to sell myself as a peer, not necessarily as a star.
But these days, it's pretty different.
She's not chronically online anymore, right?
She
doesn't really go on Instagram anymore or TikTok, right?
And I think a big reason for that is she doesn't really need to, right?
(20:27):
She's taken a scare.
She's all about scarcity now, right?
The less that she's around, the more her fans engage, the more they're curious and themore they speculate, right?
So she's in a prized position right now.
I'm not sure other artists could get away with that, especially new artists.
You really need to be on social media directly connecting with your fans.
(20:47):
But since Swift had been doing it, has been doing this for 15, 20 years, and she has builtthat fan community and she has taught that fan community how to act, which is to be
extremely curious and to speculate about everything she's doing.
She's able to take a step back.
Right.
I think this also coincides with the rise of TikTok.
(21:08):
Cause TikTok really allows fans to be co-creators.
uh in an artist's career.
In the Eris tour, there's a study that showed at the peak of the Eris tour, between 200 to300 million videos reviewed a day of Taylor Swift.
(21:29):
So at the same time, she's putting out a ton of content.
She's releasing a lot of albums.
She was on the Eris tour, but she could take a step back and let her fans do the work andthe evangelizing for her.
Yeah, I mean it if I track kind of like that to like what's happened in the marketingworld, right?
Like push into organic social which she did at the at the right time.
(21:54):
Yep, the rise of influencers and new channels and her ability to leverage fans as likeinfluencers to help get her message out into the world and the notion that you talk about
like her brand is at a level at this point where
She doesn't necessarily need to do the micro anymore.
(22:15):
And it needs to be kind of like reinvesting in this brand building top of funnel massawareness because she appeals to, I mean, largely everyone, I'm sure there's some haters
out there, but like largely everyone is appeal, you she appeals to.
And so like, you know, optimizing her mix for now at the stage of her being a big brand, abig global brand, and then leveraging others through these influencers of her fans and.
(22:41):
et cetera.
It's pretty astute marketing, not just a good marketer, like really astute marketer.
Yeah.
And she doesn't, every opportunity that she has or any appearance, she's always droppingsome sort of hint.
So she just received an award at the iHeart Music Awards and she wore a necklace and ithad a snake emblem on it.
(23:04):
And that's a big symbol in the Swift world that refers to her album reputation.
And that's one of the albums that she's planning to rerecord and to release.
And her fans have been speculating about this for two years and she keeps dropping hints,keeps dropping hints.
So every time she makes this a random appearance, all of her fans are like, oh, what doesthat plaid dress mean?
(23:26):
What does that necklace mean?
Everything has some kind of meaning even when it doesn't.
And yeah, she's a master at that.
She knows that everything she does will be scrutinized.
So she just drops little, little hints.
And then the fans go crazy online.
Well, I think in the last couple of seasons of the NFL, she's captivated us in entirelynew worlds of live sports showing, live sports viewing.
(23:54):
uh
She's infiltrated the last monocultural event that we have, which is football, NFLfootball.
We live in a world of a million niches at this point, but football is the only thing thatreally brings us together.
And I don't think she was calculated about this.
I think she just wants to support her boyfriend, but the effects have worked.
(24:18):
It has only increased her popularity.
It's brought on some haters too, don't get me wrong.
Of course, of course.
mean, you can't have success without haters.
So yeah.
And I wish Travis all the best, but she does write about a lot of breakup songs.
I'll just leave that one there.
He'll be perfectly fine.
(24:41):
Yeah, I think he'll be death just fine.
But I do hope the best for both of them.
But it does make me as a dad of a teenage girl, not that she is, but we hear a lot ofTaylor Swift songs.
There's a lot of breakups in those songs.
Travis, be careful, man.
Do what you need to do.
But I think one of the things we've been talking about is she's a great marketer.
(25:02):
But I think beyond just the success that she's had in marketing and building a brand islike her business savvy is uncanny as well.
Just curious, like, I you've written a whole book about her career.
Like, what were some of the takeaways that you took away?
since you are both a business writer and you're writing about this cultural icon, curiouswhat the business lessons were that you took away.
(25:26):
most important one, and this goes back to her early career when she was 13 or 14 yearsold, is a classic entrepreneurial story.
She seized an opportunity that other people had ignored or didn't think existed.
She was a teen girl trying to make it in country music.
2004, 2005, 2006, when her first album came out, the consensus was, nope, we can't dothis.
(25:52):
She wanted to her own songs.
which for a girl her age, not something that Nashville was willing to do.
She wanted to write songs for an audience of her peers, teenage girls.
Nashville, the consensus was that audience doesn't exist, and she wanted to put out analbum as soon as possible.
Most people told her she had to wait until she was 18, at least.
(26:14):
But she persisted.
Still, a lot of people in country music are like, this isn't gonna work.
And they were right, because the data and past experiences showed
that someone like her probably wouldn't break out.
At the time, 80 % of hits on country radio were performed by men, and men were played fourto five times more than women on country radio.
(26:37):
And there's no way you could be successful in 2006 in country music without having the DJsand programmers playing your songs on country radio.
There's no way.
And Swift persisted, right?
She was really close to that audience.
She knew that her peers liked her songs and she ended up with finding a record label.
(27:00):
The head of that record label believed in her vision.
Of course, the rest is history, but they really ended up creating their own category,right?
They were going after an audience that everyone else had ignored.
And even though they had the data to show that those country music executives wereprobably right, I think Swift and Scott Prashetta, the head of her label,
(27:23):
thought otherwise.
And because of that, she broke out on country music because she was doing something thatother people weren't doing.
It's a great way to talk about differentiation in a crowded category and pushing forward,pushing forward to your point like an entrepreneur would anyway.
Anyway, she is, like I said at the outset, I've admired what she's been able to accomplishfrom an outsider's purview and from somebody that's in the marketing world and just kind
(27:55):
of in all of the brand that she's built.
pretty amazing.
I mean, at this point, her popularity has reached absurd levels.
I mean, absurd in a good way.
In 2024 alone, she represented close to 2 % of the total music market, just her albums,just her streams.
(28:16):
And it doesn't include the box office for the AeroStore, it doesn't include merchandisesales.
So if it did, those numbers would be much higher.
And the AeroStore grossed
over $2 billion.
That's nearly twice as much as the second place concert, which was Coldplay's Music of theSpheres.
But she's not a superstar.
I don't even think she's a megastar.
(28:37):
I don't really know what to call her because she's exponentially more successful andpopular than even superstar artists at this point.
It feels like it's on the order of magnitude of galactic star, as far as we know today,there's not life outside of Earth.
For sure.
Yeah, I know.
know.
someone out there can come up with a great name for what she is right now, please tell mebecause I don't know what that is.
(29:01):
I agree.
agree.
Well, one of the things we do on the show is get to know you a little bit better.
And, we know you had a late start talking.
You've definitely made up for it at this point in life.
But has there been an experience of your past that defines or makes up who you are today?
Great question.
(29:22):
It's not a direct moment, but I had a change of heart about my own creative process.
think growing up, my creative process is very non-linear, right?
I'm not a outline and just write the thing type of person.
My creative process is all over the place.
(29:43):
If anyone wants to know what my creative process looks like, look up Dostoevsky'snotebooks.
Right.
And this is a big moment for me when I looked at his notebooks because his notebooks lookcrazy.
There's he's writing on all sides of the page.
Some of it's upside down.
There's arrows being drawn over the place.
Like you can't make sense of it.
And I was like, I feel seen now.
(30:04):
That's I'm not comparing my I'm not going to write, you know, you know, I can't write likeDostoevsky, but I'm not going to write crime and punishment.
But I came to that real estate.
was like, you know what?
That's my creative process and that's the way that I need to do things.
It's not a weakness, it's not a deficiency.
And the first time I realized that, a burden was released because after that, was justtrying to find ways to make that work for me and trying to find processes to allow the
(30:38):
chaos and allow the messiness to be strengths.
Love it.
Is there any advice you'd give your younger self if you're starting this journey all overagain?
Say it's all going to be okay.
Don't be too hard on yourself.
I'm sure a lot of people say that, but when we're younger, I can see this with my eightyear old daughter.
She's really hard on herself.
(30:59):
She doesn't do well on the test or she doesn't know the answer.
It's hard for her and it's a long journey, right?
And it's all about what you learn, not necessarily how you do.
Just keep going.
Yeah.
No, I think it's a great, it's a great advice.
And he made me think of something that's happened just in the last couple of weeks with mydaughter is 17.
(31:23):
I'm at a different, different stage of this, struggling with pre-calc this year, APpre-calc.
And I, she finally got a test back this week, made an A, which is awesome.
Right.
You know, I told her, you know, beyond just the A, I'm so proud of the fact that you'vestuck with this, right?
Like you've really grind this out.
(31:45):
And that should be the thing you're most proud about at this point.
So the A is great, icing on top, but.
My daughter, she loves to dance, but she's doing gymnastics this year for the first time.
And she's been trying to do a cartwheel for a year and a half at this point.
And she finally nailed one the other day.
(32:06):
was this moment of joy for everyone.
She's been working so hard and then she finally did it.
It's like, see, that's like the hard work paid off.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
I have to ask, what does she think about you writing about Taylor Swift?
Does she know Taylor Swift at eight?
She loves Taylor Swift.
She's a huge Taylor Swift fan.
(32:29):
She's always loved adult music.
When she was younger, she loved Pro Jam.
I mean, when she was like four months old.
There's one Pro Jam.
in my language, yes.
Pro Jam song wishlist was a we muscle we probably listened to that song over 2,000 timesbecause it the there's something about the beat of that song and Eddie Vedder's lyrics and
(32:51):
the tone of his voice that would calm her down and she was a crier she cried a lot so yeahwe there was one car ride we listened to that song about six hours straight so now now
she's in the Taylor Swift which is great I took her to the Aris tour when she was six andwe won again when she was eight so
Yeah, just if there's anyone out there who has a young daughter and Taylor Swift toursagain, I'd highly recommend going because you'll get major street cred with your daughter.
(33:19):
You'll get major dad points and it's a great place to walk into because everyone'sswooning because you're the dad with your daughter.
Yeah, it's like being on a parade float.
Everyone loves it.
So yeah, my daughter is very excited about me writing a book about Taylor Swift.
(33:39):
I bet, now that you've got extra cool points now, so.
I'm if there's a topic either you're trying to learn more about or something you thinkmarketers need to be learning more about today.
really curious about the collective content that's out there these days and how thatimpacts everyone.
(34:03):
I mean, we always look at it from a listener perspective.
It's hard to figure out what we should watch, what we should listen to because everyoneelse is watching different stuff or listening to different stuff.
But as a book editor that's always looking for projects,
If we're trying to figure out what projects break through and which ones don't, we're inan extreme attention economy right now.
(34:28):
And I'm really curious about how to navigate that as a creator, but also as someone whoputs products out into the world in the form of books.
Yeah, no, it's a really important point.
mean, there's no good answer if you're a brand right now.
You still have to produce content, right?
(34:50):
And in some cases, the content you're talking about too, like the stuff that's out therethat you want to somehow bring your brand closer to, because it represents culture and
you're trying to connect in that space.
It's a definite challenge, especially with all the streaming platforms on top ofeverything.
Like just as one example, it's
A lot to figure out in coming years, for sure.
(35:11):
I always look at on Halloween when I was younger on Halloween, like you could tell whateveryone was dressed as, as a Marvel character.
Everyone had the same touch points.
But when my kids go trick or treating now and kids come to the house, I have no idea whomost of the kids are because they're all watching different stuff.
Right.
Yeah, it's funny.
(35:31):
Well, are there any trends or subcultures that you follow you think other people shouldtake notice of?
Well, I mean, the biggest, the biggest subculture, I don't know if I'd call it asubculture at this point, but the Taylor Swift fandom, I'd encourage everyone to go on
TikTok or go on Instagram reels and start finding some fan sites, some fan accounts andlet the algorithm do its thing.
(35:56):
And you really need to see it to believe it.
All the clowning that goes around.
The true crime-esque speculation that goes on is pretty extreme and fun to participate in.
But there's also so much about the fandom that's really smart.
Just the lyrical analysis, the deep dives in the songs, the knowledge of Taylor isprofound.
(36:22):
So I'd encourage anyone to check out that Taylor Swift superfan sites subculture and seewhat it's all about.
Love it, love it.
Last question for you.
What do you think is the largest opportunity or threat facing marketers today?
That's a great question.
I think it goes back to the fact that there's so much content out there.
(36:47):
I'm sure it's a question that every marketer asks themselves when they wake up.
How do we stick out in this marketplace?
And this is what I think about as a book editor all the time.
There's so many books out there.
How do we position these books?
How do we build stories around these books that really makes them stand out when there's
thousands upon thousands of business books released every year.
(37:09):
That's a really important point.
Standing out in a crowded marketplace.
ah Well, Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thank you for writing this book.
Because now I can go deep dive into the business lessons related to Taylor Swift.
So hope everyone that's listening to this also checks it out.
But thank you for coming on the show.
Thank you.
(37:29):
That was great.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent theviews, thoughts, and opinions of Deloitte.
Material and information presented here is for general information purposes only and doesnot imply endorsement or opposition to any specific company, product, or service.
(37:51):
Hi, it's Alan again.
Marketing Beyond is a Deloitte digital podcast.
It's created and produced by me with close production support from Sam Robertson.
If you're new to Marketing Beyond, please feel free to write us a review and subscribe onyour favorite listening platform.
I also invite you to explore the other Deloitte digital podcast at deloitte digital.comslash us slash podcast and share the show with your friends and colleagues.
(38:19):
I love hearing from listeners.
can contact me at marketingbeyond at Deloitte.com.
You'll also find complete show notes and links to what's discussed in the podcast today,and you can search our archives.
I'm Alan Hart, and this is Marketing Beyond.
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