Bad Blood: Great Marketing or Great Flop?

After what seemed like weeks of hype building, teasers, and endless promotions, Taylor Swift's latest music video "Bad Blood" was finally released at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards on Sunday. Hundreds of fans had been eagerly anticipating the video, however, it was met with strongly mixed reactions.

This begs the question: what kind of marketing message did Taylor send? And was it even what she was going for?

No matter your position on the quality of angsty teenager music that Taylor Swift produces, no one can deny that the multi-million dollar singer knows how to leverage her fans. She began tweeting hints about the video days before its release and built anticipation for the video to ensure that she had a large base of people viewing and sharing it seconds after it premiered. And you can bet fans did; the video was propelled to the top of the Billboard Real Time charts and Social 50 overnight.   

Since over 93 percent of marketers are using social media to promote their products this is certainly a great strategy on Swift's part. Add in an all-star lineup of ridiculously famous females from all areas of entertainment, give them bad-ass alter egos, and promote them using powerful movie-poster-like images and Taylor hit marketing gold. Even people that don't traditionally listen to her music were enticed to watch.

Taylor Swift hit the ball out of the park with her marketing strategy for "Bad Blood,"  but that is about as far as it goes. Although, the video had no lack of guns, explosions, and star power that certainly made viewers admire the lethal capabilities of the female characters, none of the awesome power or collaboration was used to fight corrupt government, unfortunate human conditions, or even discrimination by the opposite sex. They were used to fight each other.

Jessica Chou puts it best in her article reviewing the music video when she describes it as, "a montage of hot chicks duking it out against a backdrop of explosions — essentially, a Michael Bay trailer cut with Mean Girls."

It is no secret that the song and video is largely about Taylor's reported falling out with fellow pop superstar Katy Perry. Some reports have even suggested that the entire video was built around the idea that Taylor could round up a network powerful women on her side should she need to defend herself. The video seemed to send the message that she is not a woman in Hollywood to be messed with— she's won this popularity contest.  

Perhaps the most ironic part of the entire video is the fact that Taylor has openly spoken out about the negativity of girl fights on Canadian television show Tout le monde en parle: "One thing I do believe as a feminist is that in order for us to have gender equality we have to stop making it a girl fight, and we have to stop being so interested in seeing girls trying to tear each other down. It has to be more about cheering each other on, as women."

In the case of "Bad Blood" one has to wonder if the message Swift is trying to send is actually the one received by her viewers. If her goal is portray herself as a feminist who rebuffs 'catfighting' in favor of cheering on fellow women, she has most assuredly missed her mark. If her goal is to promote gender equality by refuting ideas of female celebrities as sex symbols, again, she has failed through her choice of scanty leather outfits.    

Although Taylor promoted the video impressively by using nearly every technique in her marketing tool kit, her message is exceptionally murky which ultimately is where her strategy fails. It seems as though the one and only clear message here is: do not get on the bad side of Taylor Swift unless you want to be the focus of one of her passive aggressive songs.

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