Adland Takes Notes from Swifties and Other Superfans
Above: Taylor Swift at the Eras Tour; Credit: Paolo Villanueva, @itspaolopv on Instagram
With great risk of exposing myself, I will admit that I am a child of the ‘10s Tumblr craze – as most of late gen z-ers were. But beyond Lana Del Rey shaping the aesthetic of many a sad summer to come, Tumblr was also the hothouse for any and every fandom under the sun.
With great risk of exposing myself, I will admit that I am a child of the ‘10s Tumblr craze – as most of late gen z-ers were. But beyond Lana Del Rey shaping the aesthetic of many a sad summer to come, Tumblr was also the hothouse for any and every fandom under the sun.
It was pure insanity, (in a great way) which later evolved into/blended with Stan Twitter (now X) and spread through Reddit. It didn’t matter if you were a Directioner, read Homestuck, wrote fanfiction on BBC Sherlock, or were into Criminal Minds crossovers, Tumblr proved that there’s space for you somewhere in the ether, and believe it or not, there are others like you too!
Today, fandoms look a bit different - K-Pop showed the world a new level of obsession, Disney adults are ostracised almost as much as Swifties, and the Barbz grew their lore exponentially. And none of this is hidden in the depths of Tumblr anymore either, because there are so many spaces for fandoms to expand and connect.
In fact, they have started multiplying from the inside, creating branches nobody anticipated or knew about – they’re living, breathing things. With the speed-of-light nature of algorithms like TikTok’s you never know when you’ll swiftly exit Bridgerton Tok and end up in Ballerina core Tok, and before you know it, you’re part of a new community.
“There is so much more to fandoms than just short-term insight sources, or channels for amplification for relevant brands,” Karen Correia da Silva, senior strategy director at Iris reminds.
“Niche fandoms create a perfect staging ground for emerging culture, because they’re bound together with shared lore, language and interest-based cred, naturally resisting being taken over completely by mainstream brands and culture. Fandoms themselves are where tomorrow’s mainstream culture begins. They offer the most distinct expression of ongoing or developing audience needs, behaviours, language and aesthetic codes.”
Founder and managing director of Jung von Matt Nerd, Toan Nguyen goes so far as to say that 'mainstream' is dead and gone, and has been replaced by "various feeds, channels, and bubbles." For one to stay culturally relevant, he says, one must tap into these communities, "turning passion points into touchpoints."
Today fandoms cut through demographics more than they have ever before, and pointers such as gender, ethnicity, age, location and income become obsolete, creating a new breed of consumer – one that is much more loyal than before and much more careful with their identity. So, of course, we had to speak to strategists across the industry about how they’re leveraging this, or if there even is a way to leverage something so fluid and ever-changing.
Which Came First - The Brand or the Fandom?
Lauren Castagni More, founder of lifestyle marketing agency Sage7, reminds us that fandoms today have their own unique languages, acronyms, nicknames and references to canon and non-canon events. She explains that understanding the psychology behind stans and fan culture has helped her company get some audience segments on an entirely new, deeper level, and flesh out more three-dimensional, psychographic-led profiles. This is one of the ways in which ad land should be using the power within fandoms.
“This is insight you just won’t get from traditional research,” she says. Now, Sage7 have started feeding some of their primary research they’ve gathered from fandoms, alongside ‘open-source data’ from social listening into their proprietary audience intelligence tool SeeqrAI. “Being both culturally and sub-culturally attuned is an essential component of effectiveness, and can really give your work the edge,” she says.
Lauren believes that if strategists across the industry aren’t correctly collecting information from these audiences, they’re in danger of stagnating in the olden days of straight-forward demographic research.
But there’s another way fandoms can help business - “More and more brands,” Lauren says, “will start to look at fandom culture and take cues to help build their own ‘Brandoms’ of loyal and engaged customers,” with Glossier and Peloton being two already well-formed brandoms. But we’ll get to that later.
“New, Psychographic-led Profiles” and How to Find Them In The Darkest Corners of the Internet
James Kirkham, CEO and founder of ICONIC who also pioneered marketing a TV show via social media in the early noughties (E4’s ‘Skins’), knows much about farming knowledge about sub-identities and cultures from fandoms, but he also knows you need to be in the know on where to find them and how to authentically enter them.
“When we were marketing ‘Skins’, it was all about identifying a potential audience, understanding them, then crafting bespoke content distinct to the communities they were part of and the platforms they used. MySpace was the home and hub of this approach back then.”
As approaches to harnessing fandoms evolved, the industry has learned the importance of how you coalesce audiences around a moment. “During the pandemic,” says James, “when I was at Defected Records, we responded to the closure of clubs by creating a virtual festival in just five days, for example. This leveraged our ‘house heads’ community and generated significant earned media coverage.”
Now, he says, we are fast approaching a point in which para-social relationships between fans and those at the helm of their fandoms are escaping social media, so these hubs are becoming harder to identify and infiltrate. “Algorithms are no longer the governors and fandoms can’t be characterised by algorithmic bland predictability,” he says.
“In this world, fans and talent own an entirely different relationship totally distinct from what’s gone before, because of backlash against the toxicity of social platforms and those platforms’ apparent inability to counter it, or their unwillingness to share their data.”
TRO’s strategy director Charlie Li agrees. “Pop bands like BTS prioritise close communication with their fans, maintaining a daily presence through various channels. From responding to messages via subscription-based platforms to even sending gifts to fans on special occasions – the relationship feels personal, not top-down. In 2024, fans show their unwavering support with their heart and wallet.”
Charlie continues: “Authenticity and accessibility are what makes these fandoms more than just about the object of fascination. Being able to have a dialogue with an idol, or knowing Taylor Swift enjoys the same kebab shop in Kentish Town as you, creates a shared experience that humanises the relationship. The dynamic has shifted – the future of fandoms means that fans are organisers, vocal advocates, and cultural shapers.”
Credit: Craig Adderley on Pexels
James believes brands and agencies should keep track of this as much as they can, and as we’re heading to what “feels like a nod back to the original fan clubs of yesteryear,” they need to harness today’s technology to build and power new social interfaces and enable smart, immediate, personal messaging that will be integral to fandom and its rules of engagement.
LG2’s strategist Francis Mantha says that for brands to legitimately integrate into fandom space, they must be endorsed by the members. In their latest campaign for Le Lait targeting gen z, LG2 offered a medium through which eight creators with eight different fandoms could express themselves. “Using the Milkeye, a filter reminiscent of the bottom of a glass of milk, each creator expressed their own unfiltered perspective on the world and the product remaining authentic to themselves and their fans,” says Francis.
From the back of this, co-founder and managing partner at Wonderhood Makers Katie Hunter believes that there needs to be a bespoke strategy for any community, whether a brand is trying to reach it with a one-off post or build something stronger. “The strategy needs to emerge from a genuine understanding of the subject and rhetoric. Let the Swifties on the team create reactive posts and give the community manager time to live in the forums and digest the comments. Involve these people in developing the strategy and creative.”
Simply said, you can’t leverage much fandom information unless you dedicate yourself to being chronically online – but it’s totally fun. Jokes aside, it might seem daunting to some, especially when they realise how vast some fan spaces can be.
Lauren Friezo, group strategy director at BBH USA uses a Vince Vaughn quote - “I happen to know everything there is to know about maple syrup.” And while strategists joke about knowing way too much about obscure topics at categories, Lauren believes their real focus shouldn’t be on the specifics of maple syrup. Instead, they ought to know a lot about maple syrup people.
“Maple syrup fans,” as she calls them. “See,” she says, “fandom doesn’t only apply to TV shows and musicians. They can emerge in all pockets of everything. Our entire mindset shifts when we stop thinking about our audiences as demos and start thinking of them as passionate fans.”
It doesn’t stop there either - Applebee’s regulars are a fandom. ‘Sauce people’ are a fandom. Beer dads? Fandom. People with Twinkie tattoos – fandom. “Our job is to dive into why,” says Lauren. “And when we find that nugget, we can stoke the fans of maple syrup just as much as the almighty Swifties. Instead of borrowing a fandom, study why they form. Realise that fandoms have fandoms within them. Understand the pipeline of X fan to Y fan to Z fan – and what’s at the heart of it all.”
And, if you know a fandom well enough, no matter how big it might be, your brand can tap into (and out of) it whenever it wants. Keeping your finger on the pulse means that harnessing the power of fandom is totally in your hands, as Rik Mistry, strategy lead at BBH USA thinks.
“The textbook approach to this used to be using fans as nitrous oxide for your brand initiative by wrapping it in an easter egg they care about and letting them run with it. For example Heinz with seemingly ranch. And look,” he says, “There’s nothing wrong with this, as long as everyone involved feels like they’re getting something out of it.”
In the end, it doesn’t matter if you want to borrow a moment your brand can leverage from a fandom space, like Heinz did after that Taylor Swift post, or if you want to totally immerse it in a fandom that is a direct target – you need to know what’s up.
Is Taylor Swift a ‘Brandom’? And How Can My Brand Become One Too?
We touched on Glossier earlier, but I’d argue that there are a lot more brandoms than we care to admit. While brand loyalists might not share the cult-ish behaviour that music or TV fans do, they are also likely to stick around for a long, long time and defend their choice of… athletic gear for example. And don’t even get me started on the age-long Apple versus Android debate, which people take extremely seriously. Mattel is another perfect example – a household name that was in nearly every child’s life, and then became even bigger with the release of the ‘Barbie’ movie.
“We seek to recreate the magic of cult brands,” says Katelyn Saks, vice president, strategy director at Leo Burnett Chicago, and she doesn’t use the word ‘cult’ lightly. “Fandoms and cults share the building blocks: iconography, lexicon, creed, a charismatic leader wearing sparkly Louboutin boots.”
Above: Taylor Swift at the Eras Tour; Credit: Paolo Villanueva, @itspaolopv on Instagram
But here’s the difference between fandoms and cults: What if, Katelyn asks, the leader got cheated on by her 15-year-old boyfriend the same month you were? Was she saying goodbye to her supposed-to-be fiance the same year you moved to another city to escape yours? Was she brave (or delusional) enough to spend 16 songs mourning a situationship just as you receive your latest ‘U up?’ text?
“Herein,” says Katelyn, “lies the super power of Swiftie fandom: a deep, authentic understanding of the audience that grows and changes.” Same goes for the Barbie doll, now personified by Margot Robbie, who asked all the little girls that once wanted to be her ‘What were they made for’.
“Taylor Swift has been there for us for our entire lives,” reminisces Katelyn, “I’ve related to her as a daughter, a friend, a girl in love, a 13-year-old, a 30-year-old, and as a woman who’s trying to please the world.”
The golden nugget of information here is to know what you gave these fans through the years of your stardom and when to flex which muscle to keep them engaged. This can easily be applied to heritage brands, or even to those just recently climbing the ladder of success – listen to your audiences, and really, look at them.
“Along with this deep understanding of audience, Swiftie fandom can teach us marketers another significant lesson: the power of specificity in storytelling. The temptation to go broad is real. But if Taylor has taught me anything, it’s this: with deep audience understanding, specificity can be universal,” Katelyn says.
And for the non-Swiftie readers here, let me interrupt Katelyn and give an example of my own: ‘The Black Dog’ song tells Swift’s messy story of her ex forgetting his iPhone location on and entering The Black Dog pub in Vauxhall with a new girl – something Swift allegedly watched happen on her phone all the way from the States. Pretty specific, but somehow, all the Swifties listening were floored by how sincere and relatable it felt, yet again.
Taylor, just like Barbie, and other iconic figures (both fictional and real) that have gone beyond ‘cult leader’ and into ‘entity’ managed to make everybody watching her feel like the main character, while telling her own story.
“If you really, truly know your audience, you have the ability to lean into nuances and details that resonate,” says Katelyn. “The real power of the cult of Swiftiedom is that in a stadium of 70,000 people, what may look like a mass of sparkly crying girls is actually a collective of individuals, each experiencing their own personal connection to one of the world’s most beloved brands.”
Jung von Matt Nerd's Toan is categorical that we're only at the beginning of what fandoms will become. "Their influence is set to grow further along with increasing connectivity," he says. "They'll become more sophisticated in their organization and impact, emphasizing the importance of fostering genuine connections. It's not about selling a product; it's about becoming part of the fan's world." Toan believes that there's a simple rule for this to become reality, and that is for brands to realise that love is a two-way street. "To be loved, you need to show love. Fandoms value genuine appreciation and understanding. Brands like Oatly, Lululemon, Apple and Nike are loved because they never tried to be everyone's darling. And that's nothing new."
Five by Five’s Karel Kumar adds to this: “Fans take ownership of brand stories, then re-write and remix them giving them a personal narrative. These narratives are often far more interesting and exciting than anything a brand can dream up, because they are labours of love created by fans, for the love of a subculture. As brands, we are often too prescriptive and play it far too safe around how our brand platforms and missions are interpreted by our audience, but with the right spark, we can trust them to have some fun with it.”
