What Can Credit Unions Learn From Taylor Swift?

I am not a Swiftie. At least not yet, but based on my evening dance parties with my daughter Cameron, I have a feeling I will be one in a few years. On the off chance you aren’t familiar with the term, it’s the endearing name for the legions of devoted fans of the award-winning singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Taylor’s 2023-2024 Eras Tour, featuring songs from multiple best-selling albums, spanning five continents, and selling out stadiums and arenas worldwide, is projected to earn the artist between $2 and $4 billion.

From a business strategy perspective, Swifties present an interesting lens: What needs to happen for our members/customers to treat us like Swifties? How can we get that level of engagement and passion?

By “engagement” and “passion,” I mean getting tens of thousands of fans singing every word of every song in the three-plus-hour set, wearing tour T-shirts and Taylor’s trademark red lipstick, and swapping friendship bracelets. Some fans spend hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars to attend. Parents have taken their kids out of school, even travelled internationally (apparently called “passion tourism”), to experience the event.

When Taylor’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, dropped during the tour, it quickly broke records for, among others, the most-streamed album ever, most vinyl sales, single-biggest streaming day for any song in Spotify history, and top streaming debut in Amazon Music history. Overall, it became the fastest album ever to hit a billion streams total, across platforms.

Is Taylor Swift the best singer-songwriter in history? Maybe, but how would “the best” be defined, if music is art, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder?

When it became public that Taylor is dating Travis Kelce, tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs NFL team, Travis’s jersey sales spiked, and the team attracted many more female fans. It’s estimated their relationship generated a brand value of more than $330 million for the Chiefs and the NFL overall.

What accounts for this devotion and engagement? Complex psychoanalysis aside, it boils down to one thing: Taylor stays true to her personal brand and uses it to cultivate authentic relationships with her fans through relatable, empowering storytelling.

Taylor’s brand is that of transparency, connection, and vulnerability. She’s genuine. Her songs are stories full of emotion, relationship drama, hurt, pain, joy, love. Taylor doesn’t hide her success and failures —  she shares them in ways that many relate to. And she treats her fans of all ages with love and respect, thereby earning their devotion and support. Her fans don’t just buy her records. They help her break records, and they gather more support for her by influencing others.

Taylor continuously reinforces her brand through social media, videos and messages, and concert performances that attendees have described as “the best day of my life.” She supports the communities her tour stops in with huge donations to foodbanks. She gives thoughtful gifts to her team, including cash (she paid more than $50 million in bonuses to her Eras Tour staff, including $100,000 to each trucker). She knows to the number how many people travel with her on tour. At her concerts, she thanks them and all support team members, the band, and the fans, and tells them how much they mean to her, how much she loves them.

For a 30-second primer on her one-on-one impact, just watch Stephen Colbert’s description of when he and his daughter met Taylor backstage at an awards show. Let’s just say it includes Colbert saying, quote, “I will love Taylor Swift until the day I die … I would jump off a cliff into a pit of spikes for that woman … for how nice she was to my daughter.”

As credit union leaders, what can we learn from Taylor Swift?

After all, checking accounts are not love songs. Getting a car loan may only rarely be described as the best day of someone’s life. People don’t regularly cry with joy when they walk into a credit union branch.

But if we want to get close, if we want to live our brand, build authentic relationships with our members and turn them into passionate advocates, and impact our communities, striving for our own Credit Union Nation, perhaps we need to learn from Taylor.

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