When even Donald Trump wishes Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce “a lot of luck” with their just-announced engagement, you know who truly owns the news cycle.
After dating for two years, most of it very much in the global spotlight, one of the best-selling musicians of all time and the three-time Super Bowl champion dropped some very big personal news Tuesday. News that burst up with volcanic ferocity from social media — where the engagement was revealed to hundreds of millions of followers in a series of picture All-American perfect photos on Instagram — to CNN, The New York Times, ESPN, the tabloids, Reddit, TikTok and everyone else from top to the bottom on the multiplatform media food chain.
While no date for the self-described “English teacher and your gym teacher” nuptials has been given out yet, the fact is even the least cynical among us has to admit the timing was pretty poignant — which is no less than is expected from a master marketer like the “Shake It Off” singer. “Perfectly executed,” a top Tinseltown publicist said today of the announcement. “They seem like a genuine couple in love, sure. In America today, nothing a Taylor Swift does is immune from marketing.
“It can’t be. She is one of the biggest brands in here, in the world,” she added with no small degree of admiration.
In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, having wrapped the SRO Eras Tour late last year and regained control of her masters recently, Swift has a new The Life of a Showgirl album coming out in just over a month. Additionally, after a summer that saw an appearance in Adam Sandler’s Netflix hit Happy Gilmore 2, Kelce is back on the field with the Kansas City Chiefs next week.
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“When you consider that the entertainment marketing landscape is being completely disrupted by three things — social media, the creator economy and celebrities shifting their focus and power to their own platforms of distribution — it kind of feels like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce skipped the engagement and birthed a new standard for audience development and engagement,” points out Larry Vincent, professor of marketing at USC Marshall School of Business of the entity some call simply “Swelce” or “Tayvis.”
“Marketers are lamenting the loss of control around their brand narratives — like Cracker Barrel — and yet somehow Taylor Swift offers a masterclass on how to control your brand,” the ex-UTA Branding chief said to Deadline on Tuesday. “It is perfectly curated, and fans love it.”
It was actually on the Kelce brothers’ New Heights podcast that Swift made a surprise visit on August 13 to unveil the upcoming Showgirl. The strength of that New Heights play today saw Guinness World Records declare that the August 13 New Heights is a record breaker of its own with “the most concurrent views for a podcast on YouTube.” A total of 1.3 million watched the podcast on the platform two weeks ago, with a grand total of more than 20 million views as of this afternoon.
The next episode of Jason and Travis Kelce’s New Heights podcast is coming out Wednesday. On any other week, the assumption might be the main topic for the former and current pro-football players would be the start of the NFL‘s 2025-26 season on September 4. After today, the gridiron kickoff is clearly the second most important story in the brothers’ orbit.
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To that, New Heights repeatedly leaned into the engagement today with ex-Philadelphia Eagles legend Jason Kelce giving his bare-chested approval to his little brother and his future sister-in-law:
Since Swift pulled back the curtain on her and Kelce’s relationship and her new record, the hype for the album has continued unabated with new images and variant cover postings — and, even with Tuesday’s personal news, you know more is coming.
“The line between the professional and the personal is totally blurred in celebrity culture,” a NYC PR executive noted. “This is that in a nutshell, and Taylor Swift and her team has understood that almost seamlessly for a very long time,” he went on to say, with a specific nod to Swift’s longtime rep Tree Paine. “Seeding the whole process, smart moves that reaches right into their massive individual fan bases and the overlap, the NFL, you know? Swift showing up on the podcast was the opening move, this is a natural follow-up.”
All of which will eventually bring us to the main event: the Wedding of the Digital Era. Or, as Swift’s “Lover” tune exclaims: “This is our place, we make the call.”
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