Music Campaign: Taylor Swift

 A music campaign is how a music institution markets and sells their artists to a certain audience through the use of websites, music videos and their albums. The website is used to sell the artist and their album, the music videos are there to attract the audience to the media text and the artist, and the album is there to sell the artists' actual music. All of them in turn make money for the institution.

Taylor Swift's Main Page, Slide 1
Lets the consumer know that Taylor Swift has won awards for her work.

Taylor Swift's Main Page, Slide 2
Lets the consumer know about one of her newest music videos.

Taylor Swift's Main Page, Slide 3
Lets the consumer know that Taylor Swift has won awards for her work.

Portrayal of Taylor Swift enjoying herself and being a Pop icon,
connoting that she is heavily influenced by the Pop genre.
This, however, also connotes that the idea of the institution
was to sell Taylor Swift as a person and make her famous due to
her personality and looks rather than her music.

Taylor Swift is now more of a pop singer- and song-writer, whereas when she started out she leaned towards the country-pop genre. There are still elements of country within her music. Her website brings across a pop-vibe due to the bright colours, and upbeat and fun images. Her newest album, 1989, however, seems to reflect more of the country, and even
indie genre. This is reflected through the use of a Polaroid-like image and the title itself, connoting that she attempts to “go back in time”. The target audience she is seemingly attempting to target through her website and album cover is a teenage audience, as she is going along with the party-vibe that teenagers embody, yet also with the indie theme, as in recent years it has become very popular to be old-school.

Taylor Swift's Album 1989 and the webpage that goes alongside it.
It heavily denotes an indie vibe and can attract an audience that is attracted to
the "vintage" style.

 In one of her music videos, Bad Blood, it is also evident that she is attempting to target a larger teenage audience, because by adding sex-appeal to herself and incorporating the super-hero theme (which has also recently become very popular (as the large institutions have been “mass-producing” Marvel and DC movies)) which goes with how the general audience is affected by a social trend, will gain her a larger following, especially from those who are interested in these types of genre.

Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" embodies a more bad-ass side of her and also goes along with the superhero theme that has become very popular in recent years.

Taylor Swift's USP always seemed to be that she was a singer and songwriter who generated her own music and was incorporated in the country genre, yet still appealed to a wide variety of audiences. Other than that, she doesn't specifically seem to stand out from other artists. She was often also known for creating songs about her failed relationships, however that can hardly be seen as an USP.

Taylor Swift has become slightly sexualised to carry her away from the country genre which she had started out in and to belong more into the pop-genre.

By sexualising her in this way she attracts an older teenage audience rather than a younger one like she did when her music leaned more towards the country genre, and therefore also goes with the changing and aging population to reflect the maturing of the generation that knew her.

All three of her products heavily target a teenage audience, even though they are all very different from one another. By differentiating all three from one another, it gives Taylor Swift and the institutions the possibility to market her to such a large audience, making more money in the long run. All of these items are very synthetic, however heavily work in accordance with what teenagers like to see nowadays. They are also all very colourful and bring across the ideology that the artist is “cool” and interesting. By portraying Taylor Swift as lovable and poppy through her website, as indie and mysterious through her album cover of 1989, and as sexy and bad-ass through her music video “Bad Blood”, she has the ability appealing to such a large range that it makes her very successful and earns her more money. By portraying her in these different roles it also introduces one of the paradoxes; she must simultaneously be ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer, which both brings the artist and the audience closer to one another, yet also differentiate Taylor Swift enough to be able to be identified as famous.

By adding a synthetic element to Taylor Swift's music videos, it tells the consumers that she is "special" and has the ability of creating awesome looking media.

By slightly sexualising Taylor Swift and paying a lot of attention
to her exterior it can build the intention of selling her rather than
her music, attracting the audience towards her.
Also, this could attract a slightly male audience as well and portrays
how girls would like to look and dress nowadays.
Taylor Swift is a very contemporary artist and knows
how teenagers act, dress, and what they want, in turn creating successful media.

As mentioned, the qualities of how Taylor Swift is portrayed are very synthetic. This is portrayed through the website by using many different colours, and also by showing off the artist rather than her music. Negus' theory portrays the idea that when something is represented as being synthetic, it means that the institution behind the artist or band heavily influences the image of them. By portraying Taylor Swift so much, and her achievements, it denotes that her image counts more than anything else. According to Dyer's star theory represents the idea that the way the artist has been constructed by the institution is what counts instead of the quality of her music. Therefore, the audience is more attracted and intrigued by the artists' image rather than her work, and can in turn attract a larger audience even if her music doesn't appeal as much.