I’ll be honest: when I paid £12 at the cinema to watch Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl in October – essentially a three-minute music video shown twice, plus the equivalent of DVD extras – I didn’t expect to enjoy it all that much. But in the event, I actually loved every second of it.
So now, with her docuseries The End of an Era dropping on Disney+ (Friday 12 Dec), I’ve realised that Taylor isn’t just making content for the sake of it. She’s teaching all creatives something crucial about how we can succeed in 2025.
First, some context. The six-part series promises a ton of behind-the-scenes gold from the Eras Tour: rehearsals, backstage footage, celebrity cameos, and a romantic moment with fiancé Travis Kelce underneath the stage into the bargain. The tour itself grossed over $2 billion and played to 10 million people, so there’s going to be a lot of interest in this, to say the least.
Why this matters
Consider this. That Showgirl cinema launch party I just mentioned earned $46 million globally in three days’ flat. Within the same timeframe, Dwayne Johnson’s critically acclaimed movie The Smashing Machine limped to $6 million in its opening weekend. One was a “proper film” with festival pedigree. The other was essentially a glorified album trailer. Guess which one people wanted to see?
I say this not to diss The Rock, whom I worship and adore, as all right-thinking people should. The point here is the value of showing your working.
As creative pros, we often assume we should present only the polished final product. The portfolio piece. The pristine case study. But audiences today don’t just want the end result. They want to see how you got there (as creatives we know how fascinating the stories behind the best rebrands are, even years after the fact).
The Eras Tour concert film became the highest-grossing concert film in history – despite YouTube not being short of Taylor footage – because it gave us a different angle on something we loved. The Showgirl launch party took this to the next level, letting fans rummage through the props and notebooks. Now the docuseries will, hopefully, pull back the curtain even further.
Building trust
This isn’t vanity; it’s strategy. When you show your process, you’re building trust by demonstrating expertise. You’re creating multiple touchpoints with your audience. You’re giving people a reason to care about you, not just your output.
Taylor has gone further than any pop star in industrialising this approach. Every album now comes with multiple layers: the music, the videos, the behind-the-scenes content, the concert film, the docuseries, the social media Easter eggs.
Lots of people say she’s doing this purely to “exploit her fans”. But the fans themselves? We love it. Because she’s showing us every facet of how it came together. And we don’t just tolerate this; we crave it.
Key takeaway
So for those of us without stadium tours or Disney+ deals, here’s some good news: the same principle will work for you. Whether through social media or your own website, all you need to do is document your process. Share your drafts. Talk about what didn’t work. Because strategically showing your process isn’t just marketing. It’s a way of valuing the work itself; of saying: this matters enough that I want you to understand how it came to be.
In the meantime, I absolutely will be watching The End of an Era. All six episodes, probably twice over. And I’m certain it’ll be a joy. Not least because I’ll be watching someone who treats the creative process itself as worthy of an audience. And that’s not a bad lesson for any of us.
For more on how Taylor influences creativity, see how brands went wild when she announced her engagement.
