- Taylor Donohue
Branding Mastermind Taylor Swift Gives Fans A Sleepless “Midnights” Release Night
Taylor Swift once again raises the bar for artists of every genre. Not only did she absolutely obliterate the single-week vinyl album sales record in the U.S. by selling over 400,000 copies within the first day of the release but “Midnights” also became the most streamed album in one day in Spotify history.
“Midnights” is a collection of 13 sleepless nights that Taylor Swift experience and she decided to give the fans one sleepless night with this album release. Weeks prior to the “Midnights” release, the talented artist allowed fans to pre-order vinyls for the album. Swift created four separate vinyl covers with the four of them together creating a clock as a brilliant way to market the album.
On her website www.taylorswift.com you can also purchase a clock device in order to display and use the vinyls as a functioning clock.
It’s extremely clear that the artist knows how to build up anticipation when it comes to her album releases and the pop sensation built extreme anticipation with “Midnights.” One of the many ways Swift built anticipation up for the album was by releasing lyrics for songs on billboards around the world. Fans would make there way to the billboards as soon as they could and guess which song the lyrics would be attached to.
With Nashville being the Taylor Swifts beloved home, she made sure to include the city in the billboard teaser lyrics. Less than 30 minutes before midnight on October 18th, Taylor Nation tweeted announcing that Nashville is going to have lyrics revealed to them at midnight.
Fans did not hesitate to scour the city in pursuit of finding the billboard. At midnight sharp the billboard revealed lyrics that stated, “Did you ever have someone kiss you in a crowded room?” Sure enough, fans were revealed at 12 a.m. central time on the 21st that the lyric went with the song, “Question..?”
The novelistic songwriter is a branding genius and there is no question about that. Her marketing strategies are puzzle pieces allowing fans to dive deeper and analyze every move the genius makes. She never releases an album the same way twice. With surprise releases, with calendars outlining events, and 7 surprise tracks released at 3 a.m hours after the rest of the album; Taylor Swift will continue to smash records in every sense.
