The Art of Branding: What Taylor Swift Can Teach Us About Marketing?

Heading home from London to mid-Cheshire yesterday morning, I alighted at Crewe for my 20-minute stopover to find myself in a world of glitter.

Crewe - glitter - not words you would normally find in the same sentence.

Yes - my stopping train to Hartford was also the main route for those heading to the Taylor Swift concert at Anfield last night - the platforms were crowded with glittery skirts and white cowboy boots and I found myself crammed in to the train with an army of devoted (and very good-natured) Swifties.

We have heard that the audiences in Murrayfield last week created a seismic phenomenon measured on the Richter scale, that the "merch" is hugely expensive but the stadiums are opening two days before the concert to start selling, that Ms. Swift may well add almost £1 billion to the UK economy on her tour (source: Barclays).

All of which proves that you just cannot beat a good bit of personal branding, some authenticity (after all, her lyrics are pretty brutal in a refreshing way) and a good excuse to BECOME PART OF A TRIBE.

Lessons for us all there methinks.

We crave tribalism, whether its at a Swift concert (or, in my case, Delamere Forest this evening to see Sting - am I a Stingie?), cycling to Munich in a kilt to watch Scotland open the Euros, heading to Wimbledon with strawberries and cream.

Maslow explained how important "love and belonging" is in our hierarchy of needs and clever marketers understand this and make membership of their community as valuable.

For me, that's The Extreme Business 100.

For you, that's your team and your patients as members of your dental business - a question - do they feel a part of your tribe?

(photo courtesy of Ellie Barrow, from Anfield last night).