If there’s a master’s in business administration that doesn’t have a Taylor Swift marketing module – perhaps an add-on to last year’s study of Swiftonomics which explored the financial boost to cities hosting her Eras Tour – students are missing out on a serious lesson. Because with the announcement of her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, the mega star is delivering a shiny, orange-hued masterclass in how to do business.
So far – and we are month away from the album’s release on October 3rd – it has had everything, from the excitement of a surprise reveal to the tease of a calibrated roll-out of new album variants.
Fans meanwhile are doing the work for her by ratcheting up anticipation across digital platforms while big brands have shown themselves to be desperately keen to muscle in on the Swift magic by amplifying the launch message.
Swift announced her new album – her twelfth – on August 12th at 12:12, first on her website and then on the New Heights podcast of her sports star boyfriend, Travis Kelce.
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She famously doesn’t do podcasts and this is the first she has appeared on; neither does she do interviews, preferring to communicate directly with her fans via social media.
Over two hours, the conversation with Kelce and his co-host and brother Jason ranged from her buyback of her master recordings to warm reflections on her 21-month blockbuster Eras Tour. But the big reveal was the artwork of her new album together with some details of the tracks.
[ Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s podcast: Eight things we learnedOpens in new window ]
More than 1.3 million people tuned in live for the broadcast of New Heights and in the following 24 hours, it racked up more than 11 million views on YouTube with clips on Instagram, TikTok, X and elsewhere earning a reported further 400 million views. And that’s before listeners on podcast platforms were counted.
Given the eye-watering numbers, it’s not exactly surprising that long before Swift and the sports bros had finished their chat, #TS12 was trending.
Just like any corporate brand, the new album (as with her previous ones) has its own colour, orange, with glitter, representing the showgirl world, featuring heavily.
Those shorthand identifiers gave other brands an easy and quick way to hop on the Swift marketing juggernaut.
Within hours of the broadcast, a search for “Taylor Swift” on Google resulted in a screen filled with digital orange confetti, an orange heart and the words “And baby, that’s show business for you”, while Elon Musk’s platform put up a new profile pic – a glittery orange X.
More than a dozen National Hockey League teams – Kelce is a football star who also supports hockey – posted on social media acknowledging Swift’s new album, while the marketing departments of big corporates including United Airlines, Netflix, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Duolingo, McLaren, Walmart and FedEx quickly reacted with orange themed congratulatory posts.
In New York City, the Empire State Building turned orange.
For Swifties – her diehard fans – the August 12th announcement confirmed what they had been speculating about for months. Swift famously drops what she calls “Easter eggs” – clues about what she’s planning next – for fans to look out for, talk about on social media and, crucially, to help them feel part of a global Swiftiverse.
“I want Easter eggs to be a certain thing where, like, if you are part of the fandom and you want to experience music in a normal way, then you don’t even see these,” the 14-time Grammy winner said on the podcast. “But if you want to look at that, then it’s there. Like if you know, you know, you know.”
Swifties had already spotted that on the final show of the Eras Tour, she exited the stage via an orange door (she acknowledged on the podcast that that was indeed an Easter egg) and, more recently, she made numerous references on her socials to the number 12, including a TikTok with “A12” in the background, meaning August 12th.
And while October 3rd is the release day for The Life of a Showgirl, selling has already begun with limited-edition vinyls appearing on her webstore accompanied by ticking countdown clocks.
The first two different coloured vinyls, called The Shiny Bug Collection, sold out within an hour. They were followed three days later by two new versions of Showgirl with a dark, blue-tinged cover called the Baby, That’s Show Business edition. They too sold out in the blink of a screen refresh, though as per Swift’s previous pre-release strategy, they won’t be the last variants offered as the month goes on.
Her last album, the chart-slaying The Tortured Poets Department had 19 physical variants. This time it’s a little different. As buyers hit the add-to-cart button, they know the variant of “Showgirl” they are buying differs only in the packaging. The deluxe edition of Tortured Poets came with multiple bonus tracks, but Swift said on the podcast that her 12th album would only have 12 songs.
The standard edition, an orange-sparkle disc with cover artwork featuring Swift in showgirl costume in a bath, is not a limited edition and is on sale for pre-order.
And the presale wasn’t confined to vinyls: three deluxe CD variants sold out – slower than the vinyls, reflecting an industry shift that now sees vinyl sales outstripping CDs.
The variants, according to industry publication the Hollywood Reporter, help drive sales: “Swift has turned each of her albums into collectables, turning Swift into one of the only artists in the streaming age who could reliably sell more than a million copies for her debut week”.
