Taylor Swift’s album ‘Midnights’ proves she’s a business genius | Fortune
This Friday Taylor Swift’s album entitled “Midnights” drops at midnight and the promotions for this album have been out of this world. Starting with the announcement that she was dropping the album in the first place, which was teased at the MTV Music Video Awards. I have an entire other blog post regarding that subject if you’re interested in reading more on that.
Her Instagram post announcing the album’s release date received over 8 million likes on Instagram and since then she has been slowly releasing the titles of each of the albums 13 songs. She made a whole digital marketing campaign entitled “Midnights Mayhem with Me” where each night she would use a bingo machine to pull out a ball with a track number on it. Whichever, number she picked out she would announce the corresponding title to. This enabled her to receive lots of engagement. In fact, the videos have amassed to more than 83 million views on TikTok.
The way she dropped each song one by one and has dropped hints along the way has also garnered her lots of earned media. Tons of Taylor Swift fans have made videos theorizing what each song could be called, who might feature on the album, and what genre the album might fall into. Taylor swift is notorious for dropping hints within her outfit choices, accessories, word choice, and past music (which gives her even more streams). She has turned her fans into a group of detectives who are constantly trying to map out her next move.
At this point we now know all of the track titles, meanings behind a select few songs, and we know who each song was written by. We also know that one song features another popular artist by the name of Lana Del Ray. You could be thinking what else is there to know? Well Taylor Swift always leaves her fans wanting to know more a by leaving hints that feel like cliffhangers.
This week she put out a calendar of what’s in store for the week of the album’s release! The items consist of a teaser trailer to the album coming out at the third quarter of Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video followed by the album’s release at midnight. Then if fans stay up (which I am sure they will) they will receive a “special very chaotic surprise” at 3 a.m., EST. Then after only receiving 5 hours of sleep fans will need to wake up again at 8 a.m. to see the premiere of the “Anti-Hero” music video. Swift has also created a challenge called the #TSAntiHeroChallenge exclusive to YouTube Shorts. The directions have yet to be disclosed but I’m sure many will participate. Following all that excitement we will then get to see Swift perform on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon as well as launch a 2nd Midnights music video to a surprise song. Finally, she ends her calendar with an appearance on the Graham Norton Show on Friday October 28th.
As you can see this is a big week for Swifties and there is still much for them to slooth out. Speculations of her announcing tour dates are also in the air. Taylor continues to foster excitement and mystery by releasing information in small bits and creating a puzzle for her fans. She uses strategic marketing skills beyond what any other music artists are doing. I guarantee this albums release will take over social media by storm. Especially considering she is using so many different platforms for promotions such as Amazon prime, YouTube Shorts, Spotify, Instagram, and TikTok (referred to Swiftok) Public relations practitioners should take a not out of her playbook when learning about how to generate hype and create buzz.