PR Relationship: Travis and Taylor - The Beginning.
Literally one person asked for this but that's all I need to go off on a multi part series to explain why I think the things I do.
Whether you agree with me or not, I think Travis and Taylor are in a well played and generally well received PR relationship that is paying dividends not just to them, but also to the institutions around them. And trust and believe, we'll get a wedding documentary soon enough, even though it's currently being "kept in the vault" and isn't lined up for a documentary. Yet. But I'll get to that when I get to it.
During this conversation I will be mentioning politics, feminism, racism, climate crisis and performative activism. If any of those topics triggers you to rage comment about how they are a conspiracy by the "wokes" to usher in Shakira Law and turn the West into a Muslin Islamist Dessert waste land full of queers and aborshun and Christian persicution with men being made gay or into femoboy simps by chemicals in the drinking water and soy, please bugger off now. I don't have the time, patience or crayons to explain how wrong you are. And yes, the typos are deliberate.
Im not saying he had a type that Taylor absolutely doesn't fit... Im just saying we all have eyes 👀 He was punching well above his class.
Now Taylor:
Taylor was 19 and John was 32!!!!!! Abso-fucking-lutely not. 13 years and she cant even legally drink.
Taylor was 20 and Jake was 29, which is still bad. Jake!! What were you thinking!? Two very different times of your lives. She still cant legally drink. Nope!
So. That's the past. Why does it matter? Welp, both of them had some controversies in career or relationship, and both needed some personal brand rejuvenation. Let's break it down.
Travis Kelce
Now, I remember when the engagement news broke, reading (I think reading, not watching) a breakdown of how Travis & Taylors relationship helped the NFL with a figurehead and branding. All about finding just the right white boy to be the face to appease the racists, or something very close. I cant find that now, which is crazy frustrating. But that plays a big part.
Travis isn't some unknown minor player, hes famous in his own right, but mainly just in American Football circles. His reach never really leaked past that. So his marketability was limited. He could get brand deals, but not the big bank making deals he can now get. And his podcast really didn't move out of American Football circles.
Travis had a few small controversial moments that mainly existed because of anti woke fans getting upset he wasnt a good ol' boy, towing the MAGA line. Hes apparently more progressive than most NFL players, which is actually depressing. Hes taken a knee to protest racial injustice alongside players of colour, he worked with Bud Light while conservatives were boycotting because of their work with Dylan Mulvaney, he was vocally pro covid 19 vax and even did a commercial to encourage vaccine uptake. And his dating history, as shown, is made up of women of colour. These things had him labelled a piece of shit by some MAGA, and conservatives essentially turned on him. Which isn't ideal when conservatives are a big part of American Football.
Taylor Swift
Taylors love life has come under scrutiny for as long as shes been in the public eye, and a fair chunk of that is misogyny. Shes had, as we can all see, a string of short relationships that inspired her music. It became a long running joke and criticism. Frankly its dumb, who she dates is not hurting the world at large. Even a 6 year relationship with Joe Alwyn didn't do much to fix that narrative.
Then came Matty Healy. This criticism was well earned. Even though their relationship publicly was only a month, the fact she dated him at all is a bad move. Hes a racist. Primarily. Now I've said it before and Ill say it until I die: You are who you surround yourself with. If youre comfortable around people who say and do awful shit, that says a lot about you and what you're willing to accept and allow. Dating a racist is fucking telling. I firmly believe that if it hadn't been for the fallout, they would have dated for much longer.
Outside her relationships theres other controversies that needs fixing.
Taylors use of private jets has got a lot of heat, with her topping the list of celebrities carbon emissions from flying. Jack Sweeney, who ran CelebJets on X, was sued by Taylor over "security concerns" because his account tracked private jets usage by celebrities from publicly available sources. He basically brought it all together and made it easy to understand. The account was suspended, which im sure had nothing to do with its coverage of Elon Musk's private jets use. In 2022 alone, Taylors jet usage caused 8,300 tonnes of carbon emissions, which is 1,800 times the average person's carbon emissions annually. Just the flying, not the driving or anything else, caused the 8,300 tonnes of carbon. (Source: Carbon Market Watch)
Taylor is fiercely litigous, shes very protective of her intellectual property and likeness, so it surprised fans when she was silent when her song was used in a White House ICE video (Source: The Guardian), and again when The White House copied her Eras Tour branding.
(Source: The Metro)
And of course, I cant forget the Nazi Imagery controversies.
Just sayin'. There's probably more, but those literally popped into my head and I dont even follow her, so if I know it, its a whole thing.
Now Taylor runs a very smooth ship. Shes been in the spotlight for decades, and shes mastered the PR machine. Every single thing we get from her is carefully crafted. Now, i say this and Ill inevitably get "BUT obviously not the stuff people are claiming is Nazi!" Yes, including that. Shes spent her entire career scattering easter eggs into everything she puts out, and encouraging her fans to spend hours searching for connections and hidden images and little surprises. But not this time? This time it was completely accidental and noone noiticed the fact the vinyl cover backs made a swastika or that the lightning bolt necklace looked like the SS symbol? That the woman who is completely aware shes got a weird alt-right fanbase who think shes a white supremacist Aryan Goddess waiting for the right time to be open about her beliefs?
That woman missed the nazi links? I dont think so. And it worked exactly as planned. There was a fallout, she trended, and there was a narrative that followed: The left are so unhinged theyre making this shit up.
So now we've talked about the past, and why a PR relationship would be beneficial, let's look at the very start of the relationship.
A Surprisingly Public Beginning.
As said, Taylor is a master of PR. Most of her relationships soft launch with pap walks and an air of privacy, but when it came to Travis the relationship smashed loudly into the public zietgiest.
26th July 2023
It started with Travis on his podcast New Heights with his brother Jason, explaining how he went to an Eras Tour show with the intention of giving her his number:
Podcast listeners were... Confused. He'd never mentioned Taylor and this entire story came out of left field. But it was clever. It put Travis firmly as the one chasing Taylor. It was a public and potentially humiliating moment where he was shooting his shot. He was the underdog, and that meant people would be rooting for him. It was bold. And calculated.
On a later episode Taylor talked about the incident:
According to The BBC "After the podcast, Swift had "a lot of people whispering in my ear", encouraging her to hook up with Travis. She caved in over the summer." So at some point between this podcast and the 24th of September, the pair hung out in private. So there is two months ish where they hung out, a number of times that we don't know.
14th September 2023
Travis was interviewed by Andrew Siciliano and he was asked about the friendship bracelet story Travis simply said:
“I said what I said. And I meant what I said when I said it. And you know what, it is what it is, I’m not gonna talk about my personal life.”
Then later adding:
“I know what you writers wanna hear, and you wanna hear more about that and I’m not gonna give you anything!”
When asked if Taylor had reached out he ended the interview with a simple
“And that’s gonna wrap it up here,”
21st September 2023
During an interview on The Pat McAfee Show Travis was asked about what was going on with Taylor and said:
“I threw the ball in her court, I told her, ‘I’ve seen you rock the stage in Arrowhead, you might have to come see me rock the stage in Arrowhead.’ We’ll see what happens in the near future.”
Somehow he was surprised that publicly trying to score a date with one of the most famous women in the world garnered a lot of attention and speculation, saying:
“It’s hilarious how much traction this has actually got, I think it’s, right now, it’s like that old game in school called ‘Telephone,’ where everybody is just whispering in each other’s ear, just hearing some random stuff.”
24th September 2023
Taylor attended a Chiefs game, but not sitting just anywhere. In a weirdly intimate for an apparently fresh and new budding relationship, Taylor was in Kelces Suite with his mum. She had already met at least his mum in the two months since the podcast episode where Travis tried shooting his shot and this game and was just hanging out with her. I don't know about you, but that's pretty fast moving for meeting the parents, especially if you're not dating yet. So obviously looking at it like that they're clearly dating at this point and I would guess have been for longer than the public narrative we're being fed would lead us to believe. But I digress.
After the game Travis and Taylor were spotted leaving together:
27th September 2023
Travis talked about the game on his podcast, singing Taylors praises:
Taylor attended a second Chiefs game with a group of friends, most of whom are incredibly famous. Then theres Blake Lively.
Some Chiefs fans were less than impressed however, because The NFL went a little bit HAM over Taylor and her famous friends being at the game, obviously courting Swifties:
It was Too Much Taylor.
Even Travis and Jason talked about it on their podcast.
Third chiefs game drops, with Taylor hanging out with Travis' mum and Brittany Mahomes, wife of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
15th October 2023
Taylor and Travis were spotted out by paparazzi heading to Catch Steak in New York City following the Saturday Night Live season 49 premiere. This was their first public sighting together outside of Chiefs games.
22nd October 2023
More Taylor and Brittany at yet another Chiefs game.
Travis and Taylor were "spotted" leaving together and photographed.
And then later on a post was made by Chariah Gordon, the partner of then Chiefs wide receiver Mecole Hardman that included a picture of Taylor kissing Travis on the cheek, the first public kiss of any kind up to that point.
And that was the hard launch done. They were very obviously dating, she was in with his family and coworkers and their partners, and she had positioned herself as the perfect supportive girlfriend who showed up cheering at every game. It was a perfectly played launch, if not completely novel.
You see across the board this kind of public courting is almost unheard of in celebrity circles. This was completely new ground, and fans ate it up. A very, very clever way to differentiate this relationship from the rest, to bring Swifties to the NFL to boost viewership and merch sales, and boost viewership of Travis and Jason's podcast. And it worked. Whether you like it or not, you cannot deny this was incredibly successful even from the very beginning.
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