3 Things Brands Can Learn From Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” Video
If you missed Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” video launch last week, then you must have been living under a rock.
Her video received 20.1m views in 24 hours, the most ever on the Vevo network — Nicki Minaj previously held this record with Anaconda (it debuted in August 2014 to 19.6 million views in 24 hours).
Here are three things that brands can learn from Taylor Swift.
1. Tap into vernacular culture
Superhero films are all the rage and the “Bad Blood” video is created in the same spirit. Under the expert direction of Joseph Kahn, who was behind Britney Spears “Toxic”, “Bad Blood” also had a manga-esque quality to it. Joseph has predilection for Japanese pop culture.
The super-heroine theme of “Bad Blood” is reminiscent of Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter, and Sailor Venus all had different characters, just like the “Bad Blood” characters. The underlying theme of Sailor Moon was essentially about love and friendship, which is what Taylor’s video is about.
2. Release extra content
Taylor teased her Instagram followers with exclusive content.
She launched with a poster on 7th May, announcing the hashtag #BadBloodMusicVideo to her 31.5m Instagram followers. To date, the post has received 1.2m likes and 39.2k comments.
Over the next 10 days, Taylor published at least one Instagram post everyday.
After the launch of the video on 17th May, she posted a behind-the-scenes photo of her and her “Bad Blood” friends.
3. Collaborate with other influencers
By collaborating with her friends, who had significant social media presence, the hashtag #BadBloodMusicVideo was spread even wider and beyond Taylor’s immediate sphere of influence.
Let’s take a look at a few of Taylor’s collaborators.
Taylor published the photo and tagged Gigi Hadid on 9th May. Gigi posted the photo on 9th May to her 3.5m followers.
Lena Dunham posted hers on 10th May to her 1.7m followers.
Cara Delevingne posted to her 12.9m followers.
So you see, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Taylor created the content, but had a network of digital influencers to help distribute the content. The activity all took place on a consistent hashtag #BadBloodMusicVideo.
Even better, it captured the public’s imagination, and spawned other creations.
