How Taylor Swift Turned New Heights Into a Smart PR Play

So I wanted to show you something. Okay. What's in it? This is my brand new album. My brand new album. It's called the Life of a Showgirl. Taylor Swift fans think the queen of Easter eggs dropped some major hints that she will be the next super bowl halftime performer. Track six, ruin the friendship. Something can be about me and it can still be none of my business. While Taylor didn't get specific which headline sensationalize her name, it's no secret she was dragged into Blake's legal battle with her. It ends with director and co star Justin Baldoni. I'm watching Taylor Swift along with over 16 million other people. Let's talk about it. Hey there. Welcome to the PR Breakdown podcast. I'm your host, Molly McPherson and yes, I'm going to join in on the 16 million views and feels like 16 million pieces of content out there. People talking about Taylor Swift's appearance on the New Heights podcast. First time on the podcast hosted by her boyfriend Travis Kelce and of course his brother Jason Kelce. I posted a video yesterday. I took the afternoon off, went on a bike ride, got caught in a severe storm. Bad on me for not checking the weather app. But I thought, you know what, what a great time to post something. And of course I'm looking at the algorithm and there's Taylor all over the place. I did not watch the podcast at that point, but I was able to riff three reasons why the appearance on this podcast for Taylor Swift was brilliant. I will include a link in the show notes to that post, but in this episode of the podcast, I want to expand on it. I really want to look at this appearance from a strategic communication point of view. I don't want this to be just Swifty content. No disrespect, of course, but I want to look at it from a strategic communication point of view because this is strategic. This isn't just fandom. Taylor does things for the fans. But Taylor doesn't do anything that's not strategic. And you have to respect that about her. And she's teaching a lot of strategy to her boyfriend, Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce. I mean, look at these two. Look at the Kelsey brand and Jason's wife Kylie. They're a huge, huge brand right now and a big part of that is Taylor Swift. So let's look at the brand Swift from this appearance and what really like a case study for what you can learn about it. So in this episode, not really scripted. I just put down some notes from watching the podcast When I did this social media Post I like I said I hadn't seen the podcast, but I heard a lot about it. And the morning it released, I read articles online from Legacy Press, so New York Times, Washington Post, I read cnn just everywhere everyone was writing about it. I felt like every editor out there just looked to the youngest person on staff, said, write something about Taylor Swift. We have to be a part of the algorithm and the trends so we can get the clicks on the story and the views. So whether it's on social media or views, video, whatever it is, or printed, people wanted to talk about this story. Now, I'm not going to be a hypocrite. I'm doing the same thing. But it's not because it's Taylor. It's because it is a trending story that everyone's paying attention to. And I love ripping out case studies from topics or content that everyone's talking about. So let's look at some strategic objectives from Taylor Swift's appearance here. So let me just bring up my notes from watching the podcast. I'm probably three quarters of the way. Yeah, a little over half where they're talking about Andy Reid. Now, I have to be honest. This is no hate, no hate to Taylor Swift. But the New Heights podcast and Taylor Swift is not targeted to me. I'll just say that it is straight, like an arrow targeted to her fans because she is sitting there. First of all, let's just start with the optics in terms of the objectives. Now, I know that there's a lot of content out there that will decipher all the Easter eggs that you see and all the different things that Taylor strategically does. Now, she did mention this podcast that she's into numerology and she loves Easter eggs. She just loves it. And that's something that I do love about her. I saw a post on Instagram or TikTok last night from someone who's an artist, and she was like, pulling out books and the art that she sees there. So she was talking about the colors by the by, in my, the social media post, I was wearing a green color which matches Taylor's green color here. And I also, when I was finished biking, I put on my orange Patagonia skirt. So I was wearing Taylor colors without really even planning for that. So I cannot decipher a lot of the Easter eggs, the optics. But I can tell you what I can decipher from the two of them together. I have maintained this from the very beginning with these two. Is it a PR relationship? Yes. All good relationships are because it's a mutually beneficial relationship. And there is mutual collaboration, mutual love, all mutual aspects of relationships where they're positive. But the benefits areas, because these aren't friends benefits, these aren't partnered with benefits, it benefits both of their brands, which, if you're in a good relationship, that's what it should do, right? Even if your universe is just your world. So these two absolutely help each other's brands. I personally think that Taylor Swift is well beyond Travis Kelce. I feel that Taylor, intellectually, this is my only Molly hot take. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say this. I think intellectually, Taylor's a better fit for Jason. Honestly, Jason's the smarter one of the two. He really helped Travis when they were at Cincinnati, when they played there. And when Travis, like, got kicked out of school, it was Jason who really helped him. Jason brought him there. And then when Travis got booted, Jason is the one who kind of brought him back in. So Jason has been that big brother who's led everything. So I think Taylor is more on Jason's level, but from a brand point of view, clearly, like, she matches with Travis. Travis's brand is cool. For him, it's dead on. It's football player. Football players don't need to be brilliant. They just need to look good, fit that kind of bro mold, which is exactly what Taylor's image is. So it's perfect. So the two of them are there, always holding each other close, and you see, like, a genuine part of the relationship. Now, strategically, why I think this matters is because they played off of how serious is this relationship? Is it fake? Is it there only to benefit each other? They're showing, though, that we're real. There's something here. We're invested in each other. They joke how they met. It's all very, very genuine. And I think this is very good for both of them. So this podcast appearance also, like, breaks beyond the predictable press cycle. It's not just Taylor and Travis again at games because they couldn't do that if Travis went into the season where it's more of this kind of peekaboo. Like, how serious are they? Are they not? It would have been old hat and people would have started to turn on Taylor because that's the cycle. People love you and then they get tired of you and then they backlash you. Taylor's too smart for that. And her head of PR really strategic mind tree Payne, is too smart for that too. So they needed to recycle yet create something new for the news cycle. So these two as like a really close couple. That's brilliant. And also even in this episode, they're tapping into the NFL franchise. I mean, I don't think anyone has said those many glowing words about Andy Reid that goes to the Kansas City Chiefs ever. No surprise. Taylor Swift's dad is a buddy of Andy Reid. It kind of fits the whole vibe and culture of Taylor's family background. I think this kind of group leans more conservative when like when I think of the Chiefs, when I think of Kansas, when I think of every person I know for the most part from Kansas, they kind of lean towards this conservative area. Very male dominated. But respect like a woman like Taylor doing this. They respect their mamas, they respect Donna. I mean, not that the Kelce brothers are from there, but just Kansas, the whole thing, the Chiefs, it just fits. Everything fits in the brand. The second reason why it's brilliant is because you have full messaging control. Today I had a call with a client, someone who's just going through it and I'll leave it at that. And we were looking for a place to address what they're going through. But I don't like doing it on social media, like where the haters are. You want to do it in a place that you own and it's just a different environment. And the reason why is because you have full message control. A podcast like this gives you full message control. She's not sitting down so age alert with a Mike Wallace or a Barbara Walters or let's see who. Gosh, who's our like biting journalist of today who ask like hard questions. I don't even know. Like Rachel Maddow. She's more political. Anderson Cooper is more. Anyway, I don't even think we have him anymore. Everybody's like content creators, but this put in a space that they have full control over everything that they're doing. And they're saying it's also a very safe environment for them. Again, I mentioned the cross promotion. Mutual benefit, New heights gets a big jump. It's before the season. They came in early because Taylor wanted to time it, which is smart. In late August. That's a very smart time to do it. We're kind of in the pre preseason, so football's just getting started, but the buzz isn't really there just yet because we're not in like the official deep into it where people are really gearing up because we haven't even hit Labor Day yet. And she's announcing it's kind of like the pre launch of the album. So smart. There's no big news happening in late August. It's just viral stories. And she created herself as a viral story and she gave a massive boost to new heights. Next. There's an emotional connection for the brand humanization. You know, she talked about her parents spending time with her parents. She got very emotional when she told the story of her mom and her brother getting the masters of her music. She started to cry and she explained the story when she came in to tell Travis, who was playing a video game, headphones on with her buddies. And he shut it down and then went to her and she was so excited and cried. I got my ma. This episode is supported by my new partner, Muckrack, my go to tool for staying ahead of the media cycle. I use it to track what's trending, whose cart covering the story, and how messages are actually landing with the public. It's real time data sourced from real journalists, not mystery bots. It's also a serious time saver for me, whether I'm shaping a client pitch or mapping out where their key messages are showing up. Muckrack cuts through the noise. So if media strategy is a part of your work, Muck Rack should be a part of your day. You can find the link to Muckrack in my show. Notes back and then explaining to Jason, and then Jason's asking all the questions because he's smart. Jason Kelce is a really good interviewer, by the way. I really like Jason Kelce a lot. He's a smart guy and he's such a kind of a dude too. Like he makes messy mistakes, but he just doesn't care. Like, I love Jason Kelce for that, but he's a really, really good interviewer and he interviewed them in a way that made them both very human. Like you could look at your friends for people my age was maybe friends decades earlier, let's say new relationships. When you have friends in new relationships, they're close and they still sound like that. We're new. So he brought out that human element quite well and also brought up kind of that behind the scenes aspect which people love about Taylor Swift. So it's balancing like polished storytelling. Like, even when she's talking about the health of her father and what he went through and how they spent a lot of time in Florida and how family is so important and how Scott's buddies with Andy Reid, the coach, the Chiefs, just showed that their circle's pretty tight there. Taylor talked about making sourdough bread for Jason's girls with Kelsey. Those are very human stories. That if you think about Taylor Swift, she doesn't let anybody in. That's been her brand from the beginning. You only get to see what she wants you to see. And a lot of it wasn't private at all. You got to see insights, curation behind her friendships, but you weren't getting it. This is the first time she is really, really letting you in behind the scenes. And I just think it worked. All right, next, let's get into the area of crisis management and distraction strategy. This is my lane, this is what I pay attention to, and this is what I noticed. This podcast gives her redirection from a news cycle and algorithm cycle that includes Blake Lively. It has been one year, one full year, since Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds tried to do what Taylor Swift is doing right now. Control their own messaging around their relationship and around Blake Lively's experience on the movie set. It ends with us with director and co star Justin Baldowni. They tried to outmanage it and it did not work. They are still suffering from it one year later. And if you've seen any of my content about it, I am not by default a pro Justin Baldoni person at all. But when I look at what's going on, I think Justin Baldoni is being completely railroaded. Not necessarily by Blake Lively, but by Ryan Reynolds. I think it was all orchestrated. And I'm just gonna say I don't do this to myself a lot, but I called this in August. I was writing for Forbes back then. Now I'm on substack, but I was writing for Forbes and. And I wrote a story and I was following along what was happening in August because Ryan Reynolds is someone I pay attention to because I don't see what he says. I don't even listen to what he says because I don't like to hear what he says because he drives me nuts. Honestly, what he does just jumps out at me and it's jumped out at me for a year. And that's why he noticed it last August, why I wrote a story about it. The social media curation and public relations around Blake Lively was so artificial to me and it was so strategic and not in a smooth, tree pain, Taylor Swift way, in a very clunky, arrogant Ryan Reynolds way. So Taylor Swift has been caught up in their maelstrom of just incompetence and ego and she is trying actively to remove herself from it. I've had podcast episodes in the past where we talk about this, where I've talked about what has been dropped in tmz These are direct drops from her team going there. You absolutely see her strategically distancing herself from Blake Lively, not just from a brand point of view and a reputation point of view, but also from a legal point of view. She does not want to be swept up in this court case. She does not want to be called to trial in March. She wants nothing to do with this at all. So that's why I think it's redirecting the news cycle to her relationship with Travis. So that sets them for the fall season. Because even like Travis is getting a little long in the tooth for an NFL career. When you get to this point, even when you're Tom Brady, like Tom Brady gets to the point where he's almost like a robot because of what he puts in his body and how he views his health. I don't think Travis pays the same mind to his health. I mean, pretty decent. The guy looks good, don't get me wrong. But Travis is a little more typical of NFL players that have been at it that long. At some point, your body just can't keep up. That's why Jason Kelce's already retired now. It's been two seasons. I think he's already been retired. He might have an on and off season. Okay. We saw parts of it last season, so it actually matches too like these two, tight like this. So if Travis Kelce does have an up and down season, it will make them look good because Taylor will be there. And Taylor will be there a lot during that season because they'll definitely cut to her a lot. And it also is going to ensure that the album is the focus of anything with Taylor Swift. It's going to be Travis and then Blake Lively. Ryan Reynolds is going to be so far down she doesn't want anything to do with it. It also creates narrative flooding and SEO flooding on my post because I kept saying SEO on my post and I was a little surprised how many people said what's SEO? Or someone wrote on my post. I'm writing search engine optimization for people who don't know. And I thought, wow, do people really not know that? Molly, shame on you. You should have said that. Don't assume that everyone knows. I just assume if you're on TikTok what SEO mean. So not pat on a back there, Molly. Search engine optimization. It's what happens when you search a name. So if you put Taylor Swift, does it say Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce or does it say Taylor Swift and Blake Lively? No, it's going to say Taylor Swift New Heights Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift, album drop, Taylor Swift, Life of a Showgirl. Like there's going to be so many other searches before you get to Taylor Swift and Blake Lively and that is by design. It also created headlines. Headline makes for SEO. And now with AI GPTs out there that are just pulling and scrubbing the Internet, more people are gonna find this content and they're gonna hook to these stories. So it's actually gonna shift anything that you put on AI as well. So that's why it's smart. And this podcast appearance dominated trending lists across social media, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, X TikTok, Google News, all of it. So smart, smart, smart. It's also preemptive reputation management. She doesn't even bring up Lively. It shifts the conversation away from that friendship. Is there still a friendship to her artistry, her masters, her relationship and her business milestones? That's the narrative that she wants out there. And it also demonstrates her being more proactive than reactive. She's getting so far ahead of any potential issues with this case because Lively's already sat for a deposition. It is still going on. You know, over the summer that Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, they went after content creators like they're every mistake that they can make. It seems like they are making from a reputation point of view now, from a long term PR and brand benefit, the reputation optics, relationship optics as a reputation shield. Right now she isn't just Taylor Swift, she's Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce and I think she's going to be Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce at least until December. If the Chiefs go deep into the playoffs and work towards the super bowl, then maybe we'll get it to January and maybe we might get it into February. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't think this is going to be their year. But they mahomes. I mean it is a good team. So it could go deep into the season. I think we're going to get relationship Taylor Swift. We're also going to get multi category media coverage. We're going to get press in sports, in lifestyle, in music, in business outlets. There's going to be expanding brand touch points. This album is going to be absolutely everywhere. Someone said in my comments that the album is released on National Boyfriend Day and I think national Plaid Day too. Someone said that in my comments, which again, all sorts of clever but this whole rollout is reaching audiences that might not otherwise be engaged with a traditional album rollout. I think with Taylor Swift you're Always going to get news about a rollout, but when she does it like this, there's so much more. There's also long tail content leverage. So hours of footage are now on TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube shorts. It's everywhere. It flooded social media. I'm recording this the day after the release. So I'll be curious when this podcast airs, how many views will be there, I bet. I wonder if it will double by then, but my goodness. But for a preseason episode. 16 million views. That's crazy. And finally, it frames the album as a milestone project. It was inspired by the Heiress tour. She explains how she would decompress in the bathtub. There's just so much artistry to it. The colors, the songs. Now, I don't know. But she does know that there still will be a connection to Blake Lively. There has to be. That's just how it works. Taylor Swift mentioning in this podcast that she doesn't read social media. Now, on the one hand, that doesn't help her because there's a lot of people there who get really excited because they think they're getting likes or something from Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is coming out and saying, no, that's not me. Her fans are okay with that. Swifties are okay with anything that she does. I love her message about not getting into social media. I love that it's toxic to the brain. That's just me. That's my interpretation of what she was saying. But what she also needs to do is sidestep Blake Lively. But she needs to address it without addressing it. And this in her very eggtastic way. What she did is People has an exclusive. Taylor Swift and Blake Lively aren't speaking as fans speculate about singer's song Ruin the Friendship. Swift's new song Ruin the Friendship will feature on the singer's upcoming album, the Life of a Showgirl. So Taylor Swift and Blake Lively are currently not speaking as Swift prepares to release her next album in October. Their friendship has been under scrutiny since the singer's name was brought up in the It Ends with us legal battle between Lively and Justin Baldoni. And they have been friends since 2014. The first line of this article. Taylor Swift and Blake Lively are currently not in communication. Oh, wow. Okay. This has insider all over it. Their longtime friendship has been under public scrutiny since Swift's name was brought into Lively's ongoing legal battle with Justin Baldoni. So Swift, 35, has come up several times during the actress's legal war with Beldoni. The superstar's name was first brought into the mix when Beldoni's legal team alleged that Swift had pressured him to accept Lively's rewrites on the movies in a complaint filed by Beldoni, and that has since been dismissed. But the basic narrative is that Taylor Swift was brought in when they all came to that penthouse, and Justin Baldoni felt pressured, and Taylor Swift was there. See, Taylor Swift and her team, they don't like other people releasing private information about Taylor Swift that. No, no, no, no. So really, it's not Justin Baldoni that's getting the big hit with it. It's Blake Lively is getting the big hit with it. She used Taylor Swift, and you don't use Ms. Swift for that. So now, when they released New Heights, when she announced the life of a showgirl, there is a song titled Ruin the Friendship. Intentional. It has to be. What does it do? It causes her fans to start speculating, so of course it's going to do that. So Swift revealed during a recent appearance on boyfriend Travis Kelsey's podcast that she recorded the album why? On the European leg of her Eras tour before she became embroiled in the It Ends With Us drama. But in April, a source told People that Swift, quote, was really hurt after she was implicated in Lively and Beldoni's legal case. And in May, a source told People that her friendship with Lively has halted. That's straight from allegedly, but I'm saying from my experience, that is straight from Taylor's camp at that time. Another insider said that while the pair were, quote, taking some space, they were, quote, not no longer friends. So it's a way of saying, well, no, it's not like, she's not my friend and I'm icing her out, but this is just how I'm rolling. Two months later, a source told People that Livelands Swift were working towards being on good terms, and though their friendship isn't the same as it was before. So strategically, what is happening here, the sources, which I would assume are all from the same camp, are giving you all sorts of narratives. They're no longer friends, but they're still working on being friends. It evens out. It completely neutralizes it. That's smart, because most people might think, oh, it's a bunch of different sources out there, so no one really knows what the truth is. But this is what I think you can take away from this. There is one source and an insider, which could be from two different people, but they're all from Swift's camp. She is strategically distancing herself from Blake Lively by saying that they're not really on speaking terms right now means she doesn't have to talk about her. Meaning it makes sense that she doesn't talk about her because we've already put it out there, folks. We're not talking about. We're not really friendly right now anyway, so I really don't want to mention it. Just think like with your bestie group, with your girlfriends, when someone's kind of on the out, you just what's there? But you really don't publicly talk about it, but just you talk about it. Right? Jason Kelsey, the Kelsey brand. Yes. Ryan Reynolds has a lot of money. His brand was huge. It was big. He sold the aviation gin. He also had. His company was involved in the Astronomer, which Listen to my podcast about that. I know everybody loved the ad with Gwyneth Paltrow, and I'm reading the Gwyneth Paltrow book, by the way, and I already love it because the author, Amy Odell, told me, read the introduction about dealing with the publicist for Gwyneth Paltrow, and already I'm hooked just from that. Because what do they do in that book? I'll just drop this right now. Gwyneth Paltrow's publicist says, oh, yeah, I'll work with you. The publicist says, Amy Odell, the author of the biography, oh, yeah, we'll work with you. Gwyneth will work with you, absolutely. So then Amy thinks that they're working, and then all of a sudden she tries to get answers. No. Basically gets ghosted. That's what they do. This is how you manage a brand when you're in Hollywood or when you're like really, really big like this, and you just stay kind of beyond it. Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, they got stuck in it because they thought they could go beyond it. But the problem is they don't have enough people who love them compared to Taylor Swift. And one might argue, but Gwyneth Paltrow has a lot of haters. True, but that's part of her brand. Part of her brand is being unrelatable and being all goopy and having like these crazy goopy products. But people aspire to be like a Gwyneth Paltrow, even though they know she is not relatable at all. Taylor Swift is not relatable at all because she's a billionaire, but she's relatable as a girl. So it works. And it does not work for Blake Lively. So here's the key takeaway for communicators, strategic types or people who are just curious. From a strategic point of view, this New Heights appearance for Taylor Swift shows the power of blended marketing, personal narrative and reputation management all in one single media event. It's brilliant. She carefully chose a platform that offered reach, control, emotional depth and showed who they really were, like a genuine couple. But it also amplified the album launch and also amplified New Heights, helped the whole entire Kelsey brand and swayed and redirected the the public conversation away from sensitive personal rumors and speculation around her friendship with Blake Lively, who's married to Ryan Reynolds. Of course I still say this. It's August, one year since the it ends with us and Deadpool premieres and they're still in it. Why? Because of bad pr? You want to know? Good strategic priority? Taylor Swift appearing on New Heights. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.