Publicizing Taylor Swift’s Casket
In October 2022, Taylor Swift popped out of a Titan Casket in her “Anti-Hero” music video, which came out at the same time as her surprise “Midnights” album.
Naturally, Titan wanted to capture some of the media attention showered on Swift - so they hired The Media Whisperer.
Screenshots of our interview notes and email pitch (pinch to zoom)
We interviewed Titan Co-Founder Josh Siegel about the backstory of the casket’s music video appearance, then distributed a series of email pitches to thousands of music, entertainment, culture, and general news journalists around the country.
The media loved our pitch. “I get a lot of emails from people hoping I will cover their doodads, and mostly I just delete them so I can see the important things in my inbox,” Slate’s Shannon Palus wrote in a profile of Titan. “But the subject line ‘Taylor Swift used my casket in her funeral-themed music video’ made me click.”
The writers at Gizmodo asked if Titan could deliver a casket to their New York City headquarters; Titan obliged.
Gizmodo subsquently published not one but two pieces about staffers spending the day with - and sleeping in - the casket.
The A/V Club, INSIDER, Newsweek, Paper Magazine, and High Snobiety - among other mainstream outlets - also covered the story.
In addition to targeting national media, we tailored our pitches to journalists from Titan’s two home bases, Boston and Seattle.
About two dozen regional newspapers, magazines, TV newscasts, radio shows, and websites covered the story, including The Boston Globe (which put the story on page 1 of their print edition) and The Seattle Times.
After seeing the Swift stories, producers from CBS Sunday Morning reached out to the Titan Casket team. The 5-minute story they produced aired on national TV; on YouTube, the segment generated more than half-a-million views.