It’s a love story, and baby, she said yes! Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got engaged, and everyone and their mother is talking about it.
It seems like Taylor Swift is always in the spotlight for something new, whether it’s easter eggs hidden in her outfits, new music, or her record-breaking Eras Tour; headlines about Swift never seem to disappear. On her journey to fame, she’s become a brand before a person, as evidenced by a new wave of ad campaigns.
An ethical dilemma is raised when Swift’s personal life is what’s center stage. When Swift and Kelce made their first public appearance, it was all in the news, but it certainly wasn’t treated the same way their engagement has been treated recently. Instead of their engagement just being a media frenzy, a lot of money is now involved.
The way that Swift’s new album has been used for ad campaigns is unprecedented, but not necessarily unethical. With a name as big as hers, it really isn’t a surprise that everything she does has a ripple effect throughout the media. However, the reaction to her engagement makes clear exactly why she told fans that she doesn’t plant easter eggs about her personal life while on Travis and Jason Kelce’s New Heights podcast.
Within hours of Swift announcing her engagement to Kelce, brand after brand had an ad ready to launch with the news. Her engagement quickly became a money-grab. The most interesting consideration of all? This isn’t a phenomenon we see with other celebrities.
Have we crossed a line in our collective parasocial relationship with Taylor Swift with our monetized reactions? In short, yes. When moments of intimacy and connection become a way for brands to make money, we need to re-evaluate the way we view celebrities. Social media can make it difficult to remember that someone’s personal life is just that: personal. It’s an important aspect of media literacy to keep this in mind.
While it can be fun to scroll for hours on TikTok and see a million different theories about who every Taylor Swift song is about or what easter eggs she’s been leaving to signal her new album, it’s important to distinguish our interactions with her as an audience versus as consumers. Listening to her music and staying up to date with what she’s doing is very different from buying products from a company because they made a cute post about her engagement.
It can be tempting to think of a brand as another influencer that’s making a video to share their excitement, but the difference lies in what is being sold. Yes, influencers make money from views on their videos, but companies get sales from their products from being involved in popular culture.
When Taylor Swift announced that she was engaged, companies felt invited to show their involvement in her life to boost their sales, without much regard for what that meant for her life.
Celebrities are people too, people with thoughts, insecurities, and emotions. These are the things that make us human. Our ties with one another and our choices to pursue relationships have a lot of depth and meaning to us. Allowing this to become a money grab just because she’s Taylor Swift doesn’t feel right.
Ad campaigns like those pictured here are convoluting the line between Taylor Swift the human and Taylor Swift the brand. It’s important to make clear the distinction between humanity and brand deals. Intimate moments aren’t meant to be used as advertisements.
In our digital age, where every bit of information is available in seconds, it’s hard not to become a part of the algorithm. However, it’s one thing to be talking about something popular, and it’s another to be turning someone else’s life into your personal profit.
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