Recently Taylor Swift has come under fire for sending a cease and desist to Florida college student, Jack Sweeney. A cease and desist is a threat of legal action sent to someone. Cease and desist are sent to get someone to stop alleged illegal activity. Jack Sweeney runs a Twitter account called @SwiftJetNextDaythat tracks the usage and locations of private jets with data available to the public. The data source he uses is Federal Aviation Admiration, which is publicly available. The cease and desist from Taylor is her flexing her power over Jack: 99% of people in the world do not own or fly a private jet or send random cease and desist. Despite her billionaire status; the majority of her fans still think of her as a close friend. Fans still think of her as a close friend or peer due to strategic early career marketing as the relatable girl next store and how she connected with fans creating a parasocial relationship with them. However, as increased private jet scrutiny and the general public tires of Taylor Swift, the way fans view her may be affected, potentially causing her to lose fans. The question remains, how can she come back from this potential decline in popularity?
Creating Taylor Swift the brand And Early Career
Taylor started in the music industry as a country singer. Her first album, self-titled Debut Taylor Swift, is a pop country album, which was released on October 24th, 2006. The album drew inspiration from The Dixie Chicks, Shana Twain, LeAnn Rimes, and Faith Hill. Taylor wrote about her experiences as a teenager and from her childhood, which included friendships, romances, crushes, boys, and life growing up on a Christmas tree farm. Teenage girls could relate to these experiences. Teenagers also went wild for Taylor Swift because of her background story crafted by her team. Taylor’s backstory was she was a young girl who grew up on a small Christmas tree farm. Then at a young age, she became interested in music and loved songwriting and playing the guitar. As a young girl, she got randomly discovered by an agent and moved to Hendersonville Tennessee, to pursue a career in country music. Then when she moved to Hendersonville, she was an outsider at school she was bullied, and awkward around boys, very much an underdog.
However, there were parts of the story left out. In Taylor’s story, there were facts exaggerated or omitted. For example, in her story, she mentioned that this was all her doing and parents were supportive, but not crazy stage parents. In reality, her parents were stage parents and would do anything to get her famous. For example, Taylor got a gig singing the national anthem at the 76ers game at age 11. However, what is not mentioned is how she got that gig at such a young age. She got the gig through her father, Scott Swift. He was a stockbroker and financial manager for Merrill Lynch. According to court documents from Mueller v. Swift, Scott promoted his daughter at meetings with clients. One of the clients oversaw the Harlem Wizards stands. When the person who was supposed to sing the national anthem at the Harlem Wizards game canceled, he offered the position to Taylor. From there her father video-taped her singing the national anthem at the Harlem Wizards game and sent it to a connection at the 76ers. This demonstrates how determined her father was to get his daughter famous and was a pushy stage parent and that management teams fabricate back stories for talent to give a wide audience appeal and a pushy stage parent does not appeal to people.
Taylor’s team marketed the album in traditional ways consisting of television and radio interviews, live television performances, and opening for other musicians on tour such as George Strait, Faith Hill, Brad Paisley, and Rascal Flatts. During the promotional interviews and early performances, she talked and sang with a fake southern twang to connect her to country music audiences. She would talk about those same experiences of boys, school, her music, and her life. What made Taylor stand out was the non-traditional marketing of the album through early adaptation of social media and creating Easter eggs for her fans. Even though the social media platforms have changed: she still uses both methods today. Myspace is a social media platform popular in the early 2000s, similar to Facebook. Taylor created a blog on Myspace. On the site, she posted photos of life events, shared her music, and random updates about her thoughts. Marketing music through social media was an innovation in 2006 because social media was still very new. Because of the newness of social media, it was more authentic and less polished than seen in 2024; she directly connected with fans authentically.
Easter eggs are known as little clues left behind in the song lyrics, album art, performances, clothing choices, and music video by Taylor to reveal a secret message. Her first kind of Easter eggs appeared in her Debut Album, in the lyrics books that came with the CD. Inside each song, in the book, certain words in the lyrics had capitalized letters, and each capitalized letter put together would spell out a hidden message. Fans love the Easter eggs because they felt like an inside joke between them and Taylor. These things lead to many fans developing a parasocial relationship with Taylor.
Parasocial relationships
A parasocial relationship is where one develops a close, one-sided relationship with someone despite never meeting the person or regularly personally interacting with this person (Psychology Today). Para-social relationships are formed through media consumption. In addition to her social media presence and the Easter eggs, Taylor Swift facilitated a strong parasocial relationship by inviting fans to her house to listen to the album before it was released and meeting all her fans for free at her concerts. The result of a parasocial relationship was fans felt intensely connected and loyal to Taylor: she felt like a friend. Because she feels like a friend to her fans, she convinces them to constantly buy. In reality, though fans do not know Taylor Swift as a person, instead the person that fans think they know is Taylor Swift, the brand.
Taylor Swift, the brand, sells the idea of her as your friend and uses Easter eggs to help fans learn more about her. This results in fans spending more money to uncover these puzzles as seen with her album Midnights, where if you bought all four versions of the albums on Vinyl, which were the same with one or two extra added songs and different covers, you could assemble a clock. Friends do not pressure friends to buy four versions of the basically the same thing for $30 each. Additionally, fans will spend tons of money through merchandise, concert tickets, etc because if you buy Taylor Swift you are supporting your friend. However, friends do pressure friends into constantly spending money on them. Fans spending tons of money in addition to strategic business moves and hard work has made her rich, with a net worth of 1.1 billion (Business Insider).
NO LONGER relatabLE & POTENTIAL decline
When you are worth 1.1 billion dollars like Taylor, you are no longer relatable to 99% of people. However, it is a problem when a brand is built on personal relatability due to its limited shelf life. Relatability as a brand has a limited shelf life because once that person is successful and is amassing a fortune, they are no longer relatable to their audience. Then once that person is no longer relatable, people will say they have changed, and their content will not hit the same, inevitably losing some fans, which can result in a potential decline. This is huge because losing fans and fans’ parasocial relationships will result in her losing money.
deep decline prevention and REBRANDING
Yet, even though Taylor Swift is at peak popularity with The Eras Tour and her new album The Tortured Poets Departments, set to be released on April 19th, 2024, a decline is inevitable. This is due to people not being at their peak forever, overexposure, and fatigue of celebrity culture. She can prevent a steep decline by dropping the cease and desist against Jack Sweeney, stopping the staged paparazzi walks, and taking a break after The Eras Tour is complete. Taylor should drop the cease and desist against Jack because it looks terrible that a billionaire is going after a college student, even though he did not do anything illegal. Taylor needs to stop staged paparazzi walks because for her to do staged paparazzi walks to give away her location to the public, but sending cease and desist to Jack for doing the same thing with publicly available data is hypocritical and not a good look for the brand. She should take a break from music and touring after The Eras Tour to let people miss her.
As for rebranding, she needs to do the following: stop trying to be relatable, stop victimizing herself all the time, and permanently adopt a similar reclusive persona as she did during Folklore and Evermore. First, once a person is of Ms. Swift’s status and wealth, they can no longer understand the general population. Because of that, she needs to stop pretending like she does, when Ms. Swift pretends she understands, it comes across as cringe and out of touch. Next, Taylor Swift has a victim of horrific things such as the AI porn scandal and sexual assault. However, Taylor Swift does victimize herself in situations where she is not a victim, such as her getting outraged over a joke made on Ginny and Georgia, and the Jack Sweeny situation. In Ginny and Georgia, there was a joke made about Taylor Swift that she got upset and publicly tweeted at Netflix over it. Taylor does not have to like the joke; nevertheless, as a public figure, people are going to make jokes about that public figure, and whining about it on the internet is counterproductive. In the Jack Sweeney situation, she filed the cease and desist because he was posting where her private jet went; she didn’t like that claiming it violated her privacy. In reality, the information he was using was publicly available, and as a public figure, people have a right to criticize her for being a climate terrorist. Taylor is not above Earth and needs to be held accountable for her CO2 admissions. During the album cycle of Folklore and Evermore, Taylor adopted a more reclusive persona. Even though this was due to a global pandemic and dating Joe Alwyn, she matured as an artist and produced some of her best work. A reclusive persona keeps her from becoming overexposed and keeps her fans on edge.
Closing thoughts
In conclusion, Taylor Swift’s almost 20-year career from humble country singer to A++++ list popstar has been impressive with the non-traditional marketing methods such as early adaptation of social media marketing, and Easter eggs, which made fans develop a parasocial relationship with her to cult level worship. Yet, recent controversies, such as the cease and desist sent to Jack Sweeney, highlight the challenges of maintaining a relatable image while navigating being a billionaire and the fatigue of celebrity culture. If Taylor Swift wants to pretend to be relatable she should consider refraining from actions that contradict her relatable persona, such as targeting individuals like Jack Sweeney for innocuous activities. Additionally, she could benefit from taking a hiatus from the spotlight after completing The Eras Tour to allow for a sense of anticipation to build among her fandom and the general public. In terms of rebranding, Swift could shift away from portraying herself as overly relatable, girl-next-door type and instead embrace a more mature persona by focusing on music and being reclusive and private in her personal life, similar to her approach during Folklore and Evermore. By focusing on her craft and maintaining a sense of mystique, Swift can continue to engage her fans while avoiding the pitfalls of overexposure. Ultimately, the key for Taylor Swift lies in smart branding and artistic evolution, ensuring that she remains relevant and connected to her audience for years.
