Lessons From the Reputation Re-Record That Never Dropped
Good communicators know how to seize a cultural moment to capture attention for their brand. Great communicators sense those moments coming, prepare in advance, and are first to jump into the conversation. Amazing communicators know how to make the most of it when things don’t go according to plan — a lesson illustrated by a couple of brands when Taylor Swift made a move we weren’t expecting.
In 2019, Taylor Swift announced plans to re-record all the albums she originally made under Big Machine Records. From Vox:
The whole process began in 2019, when news broke that Swift’s old record label — Big Machine Records, which she left in 2018 — had been sold to music mogul Scooter Braun. The sale gave Braun the rights to all the master recordings of Swift’s early work, meaning anyone wanting to license one of those songs would have to go through Braun and pay him a fee. Given Braun’s association with Swift’s longtime nemesis Kanye West, Swift was devastated.
In an emotional Tumblr post, she called the deal “my worst case scenario.”
By re-recording those albums, Swift could regain ownership of her music and steer attention away from the versions Braun controlled. Each re-release was a cultural event. Fans, artists, radio stations, and streaming platforms rallied behind the new versions (there are communications lessons to be learned from that, too, but we’ll save those for another edition of The EO Report).
Naturally, brands joined in on the hype, leveraging the buzz surrounding each drop. But one album generated more anticipation than the rest: Reputation, originally released in 2017 after Swift’s public feud with West, Kim Kardashian, and—by proxy—Braun.
Fans speculated endlessly about its re-release, fueled by Swift’s notorious use of Easter Eggs to hint at new projects. The latest theory? A surprise Reputation (Taylor’s Version) drop on Monday, May 26 at the American Music Awards. But the date came and went.
Then, on Friday, Swift made a different announcement: she had successfully purchased all of her original masters. She now fully owned her entire music catalog. And with that, the final two re-records—Reputation and her self-titled Debut—would not be released. In fact, Reputation hadn’t even been fully re-recorded.
Social media managers everywhere let out a collective groan. Many had Reputation-themed content prepped and queued—some for months.
So what was a brand to do?
Release the content anyway.
That’s what accounts like Betty Crocker and the Empire State Building did. The conversation around Taylor Swift was still swirling, and fans chuckled at the idea that brands had been theorizing just as hard as they had. And why let all that work go to waste?
The Lesson:
In communications, preparation is never wasted. Even if your efforts don’t go exactly as planned, there’s almost always a nugget of insight, a piece of content, or a future process that can still be put to good use.
Hat tip: PI Jasmine Jones