Op-Ed: Miley Cyrus is a Strategic Brand Genius
Posted in: Uncategorized
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Maude Standish, co-founder and managing director of Tarot, a millennial trend forecasting and strategy development company that’s the sister company of L.A.-based agency, Mistress. Now that she’s introduced herself with her call to arms for millenials, Standish turns her focus to arguably the most talked-about celeb in the past several months and how she’s taken over in terms of branding. We should note that while we’re not in the habit of republishing/repurposing content, the original version of this was published in the blogger section of HuffPo–though Standish did us a solid and added more to the mix. Read on if you will.
Sinead O’Connor is worried about Miley. So is Elton John. So are the bearded guys of Duck Dynasty. But I’m not. Because I know that Miley is a strategic genius and that brands actually have quite a bit to learn from her. You might not like the way her tongue hangs off to the side or the fact that her nipples have become commonplace water-cooler fodder. But you can’t argue with the fact that she has captured the world’s attention and aroused a response out of the best of us.
Before her now infamous MTV Video Music Awards performance, Miley Cyrus had never had a Billboard No. 1 hit—not a single one. In fact the song “We Can’t Stop” that she performed at the VMAs rose to the No. 2 spot, but could never quite break the barrier to be a Golden # 1. Instead, the song that broke that top-spot barrier was “Wrecking Ball,” which came after her controversial performance. “Wrecking Ball” didn’t just break a personal record, she also smashed the record for most views in a single launch day, with the music video getting more than 19.3 million views in just 24 hours, beating One Direction’s previous record by more than 7 million views. Just one week later the video had been watched 36.5 million times in the U.S. alone, Miley’s VMA outfit was being called the Halloween costume of the year, and a line of twerking Miley “bobble-butts” had gone into production for the Christmas season.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
