What Arts Marketers Can Learn from Taylor Swift’s Strategic Stickiness
She entered her “I’m getting married era” as I was writing this.
Although I don’t care much for Taylor Swift’s music, I’ve always been fascinated by people and brands with cult-like followings.
Underneath the celebrity and the hype, the mechanics are surprisingly more strategic than anyone lets on — and useful for arts marketers.
Before we get into it, I normally give concrete ideas for how you can apply this to your arts organization.
In the spirit of Easter Eggs, I’ll let you guess what I think you could do. Maybe start with treating your 26/27 Season Announcement more like a Taylor Swift album release.
She Activates the Curiosity Gap
Psychologist George Loewenstein’s research shows we’re motivated when we sense a gap between what we know and what we want to know.
Swift leans into this by hiding clues or Easter Eggs everywhere: liner notes, capital letters, music videos, Instagram posts. She told The Washington Post:
“When I was 15 and putting together my first album, I decided to encode the lyrics with hidden messages using capital letters. That’s how it started, and my fans and I have since descended into color coding, numerology, word searches, elaborate hints, and Easter eggs.”
Example:
The “Karma” music video includes blue-painted nails pointing at an 8 (hinting at 1989), and a pedestal engraved with “MCMLXXXIX” (literally “1989”). Fans scour, speculate, and share theories — creating an endless loop of curiosity and community.
From YouTube.
From YouTube
This also activates the information gap theory (Loewenstein, 1994): uncertainty creates psychological tension that drives us to seek answers. Swift sustains that tension across albums. Fans made TikToks, blog posts, and Reddit threads decoding every frame. The mystery itself became the marketing.
She Makes Identity the Centerpiece
“I’m a Swiftie” is a badge of belonging.
Henri Tajfel’s 1970s experiments showed that people develop loyalty to groups even when those groups are arbitrary. Simply being labeled part of Group A or B makes people more likely to support it.
Swift taps that by giving her community identity markers: Swifties chant together, dress up in themed costumes, paint “13” (her lucky number) on their hands, and even create glowing orb rituals in stadiums (Trepany, 2023).
The Bad Blood Chant
Glowing Orbs Create a Sense of Connection
Belonging cues like these matter. Social psychologists Gregory Walton and Geoffrey Cohen (2007) found that small signals of belonging dramatically increased persistence and loyalty. Swifties are a apart of a community — something we all crave.
She Validates Fan Behavior, Earning Parasocial Relationships
Instead of dismissing obsessive speculation as “fan nonsense” or annoying, Swift encourages it. She likes posts, reshapes fan theories, and nods to interpretations.
She likes fan posts, reshares TikToks, and occasionally confirms their theories. In 2021, she even explained her Easter egg strategy in an interview, confirming what fans had been decoding for years:
In this clip, Swift breaks down how she intentionally plants clues across her work — from outfits to lyrics to visuals — and how she frames them as something only fans who are looking will catch. It's basically a masterclass in fueling curiosity and deepening engagement.
This is social validation in action. When fans feel seen, their behavior is reinforced. It also strengthens parasocial relationships (Horton & Wohl, 1956) — those one-sided emotional bonds we form with celebs. The more Swift acknowledges fan theories, the more personal the connection feels.
She Uses The IKEA Effect to Turn Consumption Into Participation
Swift’s fans have build many activities to do instead of passively listening to her music. This taps into The IKEA Effect — the more effort people invest, the more they value the outcome.
Fans make TikToks debating lyrics.
They trade thousands of friendship bracelets at Eras Tour shows.
They play Swiftball, a fantasy-football-style game where thousands predict her nightly set list, wardrobe, and surprise songs.
By making participation part of fandom, Swift multiplies stickiness. Add in social proof (Cialdini, 1984) — seeing thousands participate — and the effect snowballs.
📸 Franziska Deus, courtesy of DupePhotos.com
She Doesn’t Wait Until Her Popularity is Declining
Swift reinvents herself before the old formula wears out.
In 2012, she was firmly in the country lane. Then came Red. Midway through writing it, she teamed up with Max Martin, the Swedish producer behind Britney Spears and Katy Perry. For fans used to her acoustic, diary-entry songs, this collaboration felt like a gamble. Was she selling out? Would she lose her authenticity?
The risk paid off. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together became her first Billboard Hot 100 #1, selling more than 600,000 copies its first week. Red expanded her reach beyond Nashville into global pop markets.
This is productive paranoia in action (Andy Grove of Intel). Instead of waiting for her audience to get bored, she acted before decline set in. Behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky would call this loss aversion: people go to greater lengths to avoid a loss than to secure a gain. Swift reinvents to avoid irrelevance. (Evers, K. Harvard Business Review)
The Flywheel She Built
What’s remarkable is how these pieces connect:
Easter eggs activate curiosity.
Identity makes people feel like they belong.
Validation strengthens belonging.
Participation makes the experience sticky.
Reinvention keeps the cycle going.
That loop — curiousity → identity → validation → participation → reinvention — is what turns casual fans into lifelong Swifties.
The Short of It
Taylor Swift is a cultural icon because she creates identity, interaction, and anticipation.
Arts organizations don’t need her stardom — but they can design experiences that make people feel like they belong, that reward participation, and that transform attendance into loyalty.
If Taylor Swift can create a global tribe called Swifties, you can create a smaller but just as powerful identity for your audience.
Sources
Cialdini, R. B. (1984). Influence: The psychology of persuasion. New York: Harper Business.
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.
Horton, D., & Wohl, R. R. (1956). Mass communication and para-social interaction: Observations on intimacy at a distance. Psychiatry, 19(3), 215–229.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291.
Loewenstein, G. (1994). The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. Psychological Bulletin, 116(1), 75–98.
Norton, M. I., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2012). The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(3), 453–460.
Tajfel, H., Billig, M. G., Bundy, R. P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1(2), 149–178.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2007). A question of belonging: Race, social fit, and achievement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(1), 82–96.
Articles & Media
Evers, K. (2025). The strategic genius of Taylor Swift. Harvard Business Review, 103–109.
Morris, A. (2023, May 5). Taylor Swift says she plants Easter eggs on purpose. The Washington Post.
Swift, T. (2021). Taylor Swift reveals rules behind her hidden Easter eggs [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw0pwzqUUtU
“Swiftball” fan game coverage: Slate (2023).
TikTok fan participation examples: Fan chants | Orb trend
Trepany, C. (2023, June 5). Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour: All the chants, signs and rituals that make fans feel part of the show. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2023/06/05/taylor-swift-eras-tour-chants-rituals-for-swifties/70291632007/
