The document analyzes Taylor Swift's brand evolution and impact, highlighting her transition from a teenage country artist to a global powerhouse. It discusses how her recent engagement with the NFL and the release of her 'Eras Tour' movie capitalize on her profound emotional connection with fans, yielding significant financial success. The advertisement for the movie uses her 'lover' archetype to evoke nostalgia and draw fans in, culminating in a record-breaking opening weekend at the box office.

1. 1
Brand Advertisement Analysis: Taylor Swift
Elizabeth Anderson
Full Sail University
MKT163-O 01 Storytelling for Marketing – Online
Katherine Coulthart
November 12, 2023

2. 2
Taylor Swift is quite possibly the most powerful woman in music, and some might even
say the entire world. Her brand has evolved drastically over the last seventeen years, starting
with the innocent teenage Christian country singer and developing into an absolute powerhouse
in her early 30’s. When her debut album was released in 2006, no one could have estimated that
she would end up embarking on a world tour that broke the internet in 2022, then broke records
for single-day ticket sales, gross revenue, and most attended concert by a female artist. At one of
her shows in Seattle in July, the crowd noise in the stadium registered on the Richter scale with a
2.3 magnitude.
The frenzy for this tour was enough to earn Ticketmaster an appointment with the senate
to discuss their missteps in organizing ticket sales, as the tribalism among Taylor Swift fans is
her greatest achievement. Taylor Swift as a brand has earned itself a cult following that rivals the
greatest artists of all time, so much so that when she began dating NFL star Travis Kelce, brands
like the NFL and ESPN which have never had any reason to talk about her before spent weeks
profiting off of exposure to her fans when she attended her boyfriend’s football games – At risk
of alienating their typical fans who expressed annoyance at the coverage taking away from the
coverage of actual sporting events. The NFL and ESPN took these risks because they knew that
the reward was greater: This was their chance to reach the elusive Taylor Swift fanbase, or
Swifties, who otherwise never would have been interested in sports or football in the first place.
When Taylor Swift began attending Kansas City Chiefs games in September in support of her
rumored boyfriend, his jersey sales immediately jumped by 400%.
Taylor Swift’s popular seventh studio album is aptly named for her brand archetype: The
Lover. While she wears her emotions on her sleeve in her music, she also maintains a relatability
to her fans to the point that her concerts feel like an intimate slumber party with friends. She

3. 3
creates an emotional connection with her fans by sharing details about her private life via her
lyrics, and making music that anyone who has ever been in love can relate to.
When examining the official advertisement announcing Taylor’s The Eras Tour movie,
she uses her Lover brand archetype to draw interest, reminding her fans of the nostalgia of all
seventeen years of her career and all the albums and songs that they have loved over the years.
The hero’s journey in this advertisement starts with the call to adventure, wherein the viewer is
invited to relive the concert experience in a movie theater, an adventure spanning 17 years of
music. The advertisement then plays snippets of different Taylor Swift songs as the viewer is
crossing the threshold from the invitation to the experience itself. She talks about people
questioning her decision to put on a tour with all her albums and being asked what she is going
to call the tour, which can be considered as the tests, allies, enemies, and approach portion of the
hero’s journey. The reward for Taylor in this advertisement is her admission that she is not going
to name this tour after just one album and deciding that it is going to be called The Eras Tour.
This is a callback to Taylor’s fans calling each album an “era” in that the overall energy of each
album differs based on Taylor’s style changing over time. The Road Back and Return with Elixir
are things that the fans are meant to experience on their own in their minds as they envision
themselves at the Eras Tour movie.
This advertisement utilizes a serif font to convey the importance of this product, while
still maintaining the specific fonts used by the brands that are shown giving their commentary on
the tour so that those iconic brands remain recognizable, and their credibility plays in the
viewer’s subconscious (For example: The Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone’s iconic fonts
are unchanged because they are recognizable brands). The colors in the advertisement, when
clips from the movie are not being shown, is black and white. This falls in line with Taylor’s

4. 4
brand of elegance and professionalism. With so many different “eras”, each one having its own
colors, fonds, and styles, it was important to keep the fonts, colors, and style of this
advertisement as universal as possible. The call to action of this advertisement is simple: Buy
tickets to this movie! This call to action was arguably a successful one, as the film opened with a
total domestic gross of $92.8 million in its opening weekend, $20 million more than Justin
Biebers’s 2011 Concert Movie Never Say Never, with an additional $30.7 million in global box
office sales. This makes the movie the new world record holder for biggest global opening
weekend.

5. 5
References:
Keates, E. (2023, July 28). Anti-Hero Taylor Swift caused a small earthquake in Seattle last
weekend. The A.V. Club. https://www.avclub.com/taylor-swift-eras-tour-earthquake-
seattle-swifties-1850687280
Kihn, M. (2022, November 23). Three surprising secrets behind Taylor Swift’s brand success.
The Drum. https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2022/11/23/three-surprising-secrets-
behind-taylor-swifts-brand-success
Mendez, M., II. (2023, October 16). How The Eras Tour Movie Is Shaping Up For a Historic
Box Office Run. TIME. https://time.com/6323052/taylor-swift-eras-tour-concert-film/
Power, S. (2023, August 9). Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Broke These Five Records So Far.
Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/taylor-swift-eras-tour-records-broke-1818205
Regal. (2023, August 31). TAYLOR SWIFT | THE ERAS TOUR - Official Trailer (2023) [Video].
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRjTdbmpQxM
Taylor Swift effect - Travis Kelce jersey sales spike nearly 400% - ESPN. (2023, September 26).
ESPN.com. https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/38496220/taylor-swift-effect-travis-
kelce-jersey-sales-spike-nearly-400
The Lover - The Brand Archetype. (n.d.). The Brand Archetype.
https://thebrandarchetypes.com/archetype/the-lover/