A Rebranding Lesson from Time Magazine's Person of the Year
In the Time Magazine profile on Taylor Swift, you learn valuable insights on how she created one of the biggest brands on the planet....herself. What's interesting for rebranding fans are the interesting shifts that the mega star made over her career following setbacks, disappointments and attempts to cancel her.
It was around that time, Swift remembers now, that she began trying to shape-shift. “I realized every record label was actively working to try to replace me,” she says. “I thought instead, I’d replace myself first with a new me. It’s harder to hit a moving target.” Swift wrote songs solo, incorporated diverse sonic influences, and placed more clues about personal relationships in her lyrics and album materials for fans to decode.
"It's harder to hit a moving target."
Brands that stay constant, stagnant and unchanging are easy targets for their competitors. Your rivals can easily reshape your tired narrative and use it as a competitive threat against you. Your products and services should be ever evolving to better performing for customers, why not your brand too? A brand is not something that create and forget, it takes constant nurturing. That's why forward-looking brands regularly update their story and visual identity. If you are on the move, it's easier to keep competitors scrambling to keep up.
