Taylor Swift and Cookies

Taylor Swift and Nutter Butter cookies. Huh??

No doubt that Taylor Swift is great at marketing and developing loyalty to her brand. She achieves this through community building, authenticity, vulnerability and care and cultivation of her loyal following. She is great at evolving her craft and bringing her community along with her by building excitement and creating a sense that her fans are insiders. Fans feel part of something larger than themselves.

Now to Nutter Butter cookies - these have been around for awhile, I remember them from when I was a kid. The Nutter Butter brand recently made quite a splash on social media, specifically, Tik Tok. Nutter Butter made some unhinged fever dream videos about their cookie and influencers started talking about it. They talked about it as a “teaser” with comments like “Nutter Butter are you ok?” The influencer boost and the weird nature of the videos has resulted in millions of views. The ultra weird nature of the videos speaks to something that is crucial to marketing and communications - the attention economy - and the tsunami of messages everyone absorbs every day through traditional and social media. Nutter Butter has used absurdity to break through.

And what does Nutter Butter have to do with Taylor Swift, you ask? I think one main feature is that they are playing the long game. In this instant gratification world, people are quick to abandon a strategy or creative content if immediate results are not achieved. Nutter Butter did not just throw up weird videos in the last few weeks. They have committed to the bit for a year. They didn’t do a “one and done,” in scrolling through their Tik Tok account the early videos got 40k - 60k views. Now the views are in the millions. Taylor Swift is masterfully playing the long game too, using community, vulnerability, authenticity and intentional care of her fan base throughout her musical evolution.

It is not known at this point if Nutter Butter can sustain the spike in their brand interaction as long as Taylor, but their commitment to the bit has paid off with a win in the attention economy and that’s no easy feat.