How The Eras Tour Saved Taylor Swift’s ‘Reputation’

As we approach the end of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, which will conclude in Vancouver with three shows starting on December 6th, we’re taking a moment to look back at this exceptional period in her career. 149 shows in just under 2 years, each one a staggering 3.5 hours long, spanning 5 continents, generating a projected 2 BILLION (with a B) dollars in ticket sales. Before it was even halfway done, The Eras Tour was already the highest-grossing tour of all time. 

T-Swift’s unbelievable success propelled her to be named TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2023, earned her a Golden Globe nomination for her concert film (which was also the highest-grossing concert film of all time), and has had her tour dates be compared to the Superbowl by the U.S. Travel Association in terms of the economic boost it provides to each city it touches down in. 

Taylor Swift has even broken through to the ‘men on dating apps’ demographic, with countless dudes dangling free Eras Tour tickets out for one lucky Hinge match. We see the exact same approach with brands—leveraging free Taylor tickets as the grand prize in social media giveaways. 

In both cases, it’s hard to say whether these tickets really exist or if you have any chance of getting them (or, in the case of Hinge, if you can get them without sitting through a boring, three-hour date drinking organic wine first). But still, it’s clear to see that these tickets are extremely valuable, a top commodity that almost everyone wants to get their hands on.

This is truly an unbelievable success, a resounding victory lap celebrating Swift’s illustrious career to date, cementing her among the very greatest pop stars ever to take the stage—all of which is even more incredible when you think about the intense environmental controversy she used to be so well-known for.

The Tortured Planet Department?

In the summer of 2022, Taylor Swift found herself suddenly embroiled in controversy when it was revealed that she was the single biggest celebrity polluter of CO2 (a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change) on Earth. 

The story was broken by Jack Sweeney, a university student who made it his business to post publicly available flight data about private jets to reveal the emissions created by celebrities on his Twitter account, @SwiftJetNextDay.

From January to July 2022 alone, Taylor Swift had racked up an eye-watering 22,923 minutes in the air in her private jet—or 15.9 total days in flight, according to Sweeney. Her average flight time was just 80 minutes, though her shortest at the time was recorded at a mere 26 minutes. In total, Swift’s private jet generated about 8,300 tonnes of carbon emissions in 2022, about 1,800 times the amount of emissions the average person creates in a year. All of this was made even more egregious because, at the time, Taylor Swift wasn’t on tour.

All of this information created a lot of bad press for Taylor, and for a time, it seemed like her name was synonymous with lavish excess and the carefree, environmentally exploitative attitudes of the elite. Of course, this narrative changed just a few months after the story broke, when Swift announced The Eras Tour in November of 2022. 

Swift has since responded to climate critics, pledging to balance her emissions by purchasing carbon offsets like tree planting and carbon capture technology. However, many investigations and analyses call these offsets into question, reminding us that the best way to reduce our carbon emissions is to actually reduce them, rather than offset them. 

Despite all this, Taylor Swift’s carbon emissions are higher than ever as she travels the world for The Eras Tour. In February 2024 alone, she created 393 tonnes of carbon emissions with her private jet travel, and over 1,100 tonnes when you add tour buses and equipment transport to the equation. She took her shortest flight ever in June of 2024, a 40-second journey to cover 6km—a trip that would have taken 10-15 minutes by car. And yet, somehow, her public persona remains utterly bulletproof. Why? If you ask us, it all comes down to the exceptional marketing of The Eras Tour.

6 Ways The Eras Tour Changed the Conversation

“If you don’t like what they’re saying about you, change the conversation.” This quote from fictional advertising exec Don Draper tells us everything we need to know about the way The Eras Tour was marketed. We don’t think this whole tour was created as a cover-up or anything, but it’s impossible to ignore the timing and the careful rebuilding of Taylor Swift’s public image as this worldwide event was advertised. 

If you’re a small business owner, a content creator, or a solopreneur trying to get their name out, there are a few lessons in marketing you can take from the way The Eras Tour was sold to the world. If it can transform Taylor’s reputation and win her so many incredible accolades in spite of intense, ongoing environmental scrutiny, you can bet it will work to promote your brand.

Here are 6 things marketers can learn from Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour:

1. Hype Is a Top Commodity

Taylor Swift announced her biggest tour ever with expert precision, right off the back of her 10th studio album Midnights (2022). Though the tickets were set to go on sale very soon after the announcement, Swift’s team built the hype by creating a presale program. It encouraged fans to sign up early for a chance to buy their tickets, offering boosts for people who had bought merch or tickets to a previous performance. They also only sold tickets for the first US leg of the tour initially, building anticipation for people across the world hoping Swift would touch down in their cities. 

What can we learn from this approach? Make everything you do an event! If you have a sale coming up in your store, don’t wait until the day before to announce it—create a countdown to the day. Heck, create a countdown to announce the countdown! If you’re dropping a new product on your website, don’t just stick it up there and wait until after to promote it. Tease it first on your social media, one small piece at a time, building the anticipation as you go. 

2. Make it Personal

For many people, Taylor Swift has been the soundtrack of growing up. With a discography spanning almost 20 years, Swift’s fans have deep, personal connections with her music. To capitalize on this, Swift’s team set up intimate fan meet-ups, off-the-cuff meet-and-greets, and online contests promising the experience of a lifetime for dedicated fans. She also chooses one fan each show to meet personally, offering a priceless experience for one lucky concertgoer.

How do you forge these bonds with your audience? While it’s more difficult if you’re not an iconic pop star (if you are, you probably don't need this guide), there are lessons to take away. For one thing, make sure you’re engaging with your audience on a personal level. This means replying to comments and DMs, even if they’re a little off-topic. Hold polls, feature other people’s content, and ask for (and incorporate!) feedback from the people who follow you online. Don’t be afraid to show a little personality, either, as people will find it that much easier to connect with your brand.

3. Tap Into Nostalgia

As the name suggests, The Eras Tour took fans through every main era of Taylor’s artistic career. This taps into our natural love of all things nostalgic, that rose-tinted, positive vision we have of the past. By wrapping up her entire career to date into a single product, Swift was able to evoke nostalgia in (and sell tickets to) far more fans than if she simply toured her latest album. 

For those looking to emulate this approach, we suggest taking a look at the past for ways to brighten the present. There’s a reason that retro-inspired branding, from vintage fonts to weathered textures, is all the rage. They remind us of a simpler time—when you could count on quality and straightforwardness from a brand. The same goes for the way you build a marketing campaign. If you can tap into someone’s memories through marketing, they’ve done half of your job for you. Rather than carefully creating a vibe for them to experience, they can substitute it with positive memories of their own, which are then associated with whatever you have to offer.

4. Collaborate at Every Opportunity

Another hallmark of The Eras Tour was Taylor’s partnership with Ticketmaster, whose Verified Fan Program aimed to reduce ticket scalping and ensure retail tickets were sold to people who actually wanted to see the show. She also famously partnered with companies like Spotify during the tour, further cementing her as a household name that popped up anywhere you looked.

Swift also invited her NFL superstar boyfriend Travis Kelce on stage with her for a few shows, feeding into the media frenzy surrounding their relationship. She also strategically collaborated with other musicians, such as the now-famous Sabrina Carpenter, Ed Sheeran, and more. Altogether, these collaborations with other celebrities helped to elevate everyone involved, allowing Taylor to tap into their audiences and vice versa.

This one is simple to apply to social media marketing. As we’ve discussed in the past, community is one of the top ways to grow your brand on socials. When we work with our amazing clients, we put this into practice in a number of ways, whether it’s collaborating on posts with other users whenever we can, inviting followers to create user-generated content, replying to every comment, and making sure we’re showing love to other accounts the brand follows as well. The more you put the ‘social’ back in ‘social media’, the better your brand will do.

5. Change Course When Needed

No one gets it right every single time—not even T-Swift. Swift’s marketing team carefully tracked their data insights as they promoted the tour, and they were never afraid to customize certain elements or change course when they had to. Using carefully collected data, her marketers were able to connect with different demographics deliberately, specifically targeting both superfans and casual listeners to boost sales.

For us social media marketers, the lesson is clear to see: Data is key. When we pay close attention to social media insights, we begin to see patterns and trends that can impact our strategies. If we notice one type of content is doing better than another, we’ll prioritize making more of it. If little changes like including captions cause a bump in engagement, we’ll make sure to include them for all videos. This constant process of collecting, analyzing, and restrategizing ensures your marketing never becomes stagnant and stale, keeping your growth on an upward path.

6. Tell a Story

Perhaps the biggest success of The Eras Tour was the story it told us. You’ve probably heard the old marketing adage that a story is at the centre of every brand. And as corny as it might sound, we also happen to believe it’s completely true. In Taylor Swift’s case, she turned her entire career into a story, showing us her evolution as an artist neatly separated into chapters. It’s a linear, narrative approach that we naturally connect with, creating a concert experience unlike any other.

Taylor also managed to get her fans to tell her story for her. By tapping into people’s personal connections with her music and spinning her career into one continuous story, she encouraged fans to jump into the story themselves on social media. Many compared Taylor's various eras to her own, connecting their own lives to different albums and helping to build the mythology around her music. Plus, so many videos taken at Eras Tour dates have gone viral on TikTok and Reels over the last year and a half, furthering propelling the experience and including people who couldn’t be there themselves. 

For marketers, we know the story is the heart of a great campaign. People might like your products or appreciate your service, but they can’t connect with it like they would a person. That’s why we believe in putting people at the centre of social media marketing, letting their voice shine through, sharing their quirks, and making sure they feel like human beings with a story—not a brand image. 

Plus, we can see the importance of prioritizing user-generated content, or UGC. While Swift’s own marketing did some heavy lifting when it came to promoting the tour, there’s even more content out there created by fans, offering zero-cost promo for future Eras dates while promoting a sense of community at the same time.

Take Your Brand Into a New Era

We just want to take a moment to say that, in spite of Taylor Swift’s climate controversies, we can’t help but congratulate her. As a femme-led company, we love seeing a woman succeed so completely, finally getting all the flowers she deserves after nearly two decades of hard work. The Eras Tour is so much more than a series of concerts—it’s a global phenomenon, a whole smattering of world records, and a reminder that with good application of a few key principles, even the trickiest brand images can be transformed.

We hope you’re not ensnarled in a reputation crisis like Taylor Swift was before The Eras Tour. But even if you are, there’s always a way to change the conversation, turn over a new leaf, and reach new heights you might have never thought possible. If you’re ready to take your brand into a new era of its own, we’d love to be a part of the process. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today!