Taylor Swift's Life of a Showgirl was a missed opportunity for many brands

"Taylor Swift's Life of a Showgirl caused inevitable waves on its release, not all of them positive. While the accompanying film generated £26.5 million in opening box office sales, and caused one of our freelancers to write this piece calling it the future of cinema, the brand response was disappointing. Orange product sales surged, with the likes of orange glitter up 759 per cent, but the brands that tried to get involved in the conversation often fell flat."

""Most brands saw orange trending and immediately deployed generic orange posts without asking the fundamental question: does this actually align with our brand?" explains Miruna. This follows on from my recent conversation with The Blackpepper Studio, who talked about the importance of authenticity in branding. Some brands deployed this beautifully, such as Dunkin'. "Dunkin' succeeded with ' always been in our orange era' because orange was already their signature colour," says Miruna."

Taylor Swift's Life of a Showgirl drove notable consumer reactions and substantial box-office revenue, but many brand responses to the orange trend were uneven. Orange product sales surged—orange glitter rose 759 percent—yet numerous brands posted generic orange content without assessing brand fit. Miruna Dragomir identifies a marketing workflow crisis in which brands lack systematic infrastructure to respond rapidly and strategically, creating approval bottlenecks and rushed, inauthentic outputs. Brands with preexisting brand-culture fit and streamlined processes, such as Dunkin', succeeded by leveraging genuine alignment. Miruna recommends stopping random trend-jumping and removing approval delays to capture cultural moments effectively.

Read at Creative Bloq