Swiftie gets thumbs up for business nous from Jessica Spungin on BBC’s The Bottom Line
LBS’s Jessica Spungin says Taylor Swift comes top for business acumen in 2024
LBS’s Jessica Spungin says Taylor Swift comes top for business acumen in 2024
LBS’s adjunct Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship Jessica Spungin gave singer-songwriter Taylor Swift her vote as the Businessperson of the Year in the BBC’s The Bottom Line’s own (unofficial) Business Awards.
Jessica Spungin was making her second notable appearance on the BBC’s business conversation show, The Bottom Line, joining Sir Kenneth Olisa OBE, Chair and founder of Restoration partners, and, Nishma Patel Robb, president of WACL, the body working to accelerate gender equality in the advertising and communications industry, and Founder and CEO of The Glittersphere.
The three were asked to give their own thoughts on the year’s best businessperson, the best marketing campaign and the biggest business blunder of the year.
Noting the historic failure of a legion of top-selling performers and bands to control the business side of their musical output, Spungin said that Taylor Swift was exceptional in respect of her ability to control and manage so many different aspects of her work.
“Swift’s The Eras tour earned a phenomenal amount of money – just north of $US1bn – but if you understand that she also owns every part of the value chain and, unlike most artists, owns and earns money from the tour’s logistics, the set design and merchandising, it is a phenomenal business achievement.
Spungin noted that Taylor Swift owns the film that is being made of the tour – it’s distribution rights and marketing - and such is the global economic impact of the tour, it is believed that one of the reasons that inflation has remained stubbornly stuck at two per cent in the UK is the high demand created for hotel accommodation and other services thanks to the impact of Swift’s tour.
In terms of Jessica Spungin’s vote for the best marketing campaign, she deferred to a relative who works for Stylus Media, who helped select a French Orange advertisement which uses AI technology to promote the skills of France’s women’s national football team, Les Bleues. Created by agency Marcel, the Bleues’ Highlights ad begins as a compelling highlights package of French football stars such as Kylian Mbappé and Antoine Griezmann performing expert pieces of skill and scoring wonderous goals. But halfway through, the ad pulls the rug from under viewers by revealing the actual people behind the moments of football magic – players from the women’s French team.
The blunder category, Spungin believes, ought to go to OpenAI for firing and then quickly re-hiring CEO Sam Altman. Spungin described this as one of the biggest blunders of corporate governance, with Altman and his supporters – with backing from most of OpenAI’s workforce and close business partner Microsoft – helping to orchestrate his comeback.
The full recording of The Bottom Line programme can be listened to here
