There are many contenders from around the globe for the mantle of ‘GOAT”, or at least of the last 20 years.
The obvious choice might be Steve Jobs, whose single-minded pursuit of all the factors that coalesce into great, long lasting, and commercially effective marketing culture is unparalleled.
You might nominate Elon Musk. He reshaped the auto industry worldwide, made batteries sexy, and figured out how to create a reuseable rocket, before imploding by renaming Twitter ‘X’.
How about Jeff Bezos who figured we would buy books online and turned that idea into a retail behemoth that has reshaped markets.
Some might add the foul mothed Gary Vaynerchuck to the list, whose ability to promote himself while talking about himself is unmatched.
Then there is a small number of genuinely original marketing thinkers and academics: Seth Godin, Mark Ritson, Byron Sharp, Roger Martin, and Scott Galloway.
Add in a few hands-on practitioners like Angela Ahrendts, Richard Branson, Marc Pritchard, and a trio of Aussies who changed the world, Melanie Perkins, and the Atlassian duo of Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes (whose core values include ‘don’t F%@k the customer’) and you have a good list.
However, my nomination would be from outside the usual ‘who is the GOAT’ box. It is a 34-year-old musician, songwriter, entrepreneur, and publicity machine, who has added tens of billions to the GNP of the US.
Taylor Swift.
I could not identify one Taylor Swift song, and I do not know if she even has any musical talent, but she certainly is a truly great marketer!!
To have the world talking about you, (even a 72-year-old bloke in a blog post) to have massive fan clubs of ‘Swifties’ salivating over every new piece of iconography, hordes fighting to pay eyewatering amounts to get nosebleed seats in a 100,000 seat stadium, takes some talent.
What makes her so great? Indeed, what are the common characteristics of all those in the list?
- Understands who her customers are, and applies relentless focus. Swifts core market is young women and girls. She has demonstrated mastery in engaging with that audience with the music, visual extravaganza, and personal storytelling that resonates. She is also a powerful role model, encouraging independence, ambition, creativity and determination, emotions to which those in her market all aspire.
- Consistently creates value for customers, individually. It seems the ‘Swifties’ out there all see Taylor as someone they easily relate to personally, across a wide range of channels and media. She is consistently delivering experiences, based on the music and extravaganza shows, but supported by all sorts of adjacent activities, such as having Kobe Bryant, a superstar in his field, come on stage at a concert and wax lyrical about her kindness, generosity, and ‘grounded’ personal values. She tells Swifties what they want to hear, and even their parents have trouble arguing!
- Is ‘the only one’. Marketing success is an outcome of meticulous attention to detail, and the communication of all those details in a package. It requires two types of activity that is an extremely difficult mix to get right. On one hand, you need to ensure ‘activation’. The calls to action that today generate the motivation to spend money to be a part of the party. On the other, it requires that long term investment be made that build a brand, an identity that engages and creates a long-term platform from which the activation and short-term revenue generators are launched. When done well, as in this case, there will be ‘only one’. Where else can a teenage girl find the excitement, engagement, communal vibe she gets from being part of a ‘Swiftie’ fan community?
- Swift applies compounding leverage. Taylor has executed a masterful commercial strategy. Unlike almost all other entertainers, she has retained control of everything, and runs the whole shebang as the CEO of a large, volatile and very complex business entity. Her uncanny ability to generate ‘Buzz’ around everything she does, which is spread by wildfire word of mouth and unpaid media enables a continuous stream of ‘Swift-news’ which has fans hanging out for more. She provides the creativity, leadership, and alignment most CEO’s can only dream of across the diverse range of activity her business embraces.
Swift is touring Australia, starting later this month, with multiple sold out shows in Sydney and Melbourne. The hype is becoming all consuming: you even have to reserve a spot in the line to pick up your merch and get to the cash register at the exit of the ‘pop-up’ merchandise stores.
Header illustration is via DALL-E, everything else is ‘organic’
