3 Marketing & PR Lessons Small Businesses Can Learn from the 2024 Grammys

The Grammy Awards presented their signature statues last night and per usual, the televised event brought the drama – both the good and the not-so-good.

Here are a few marketing & PR lessons to learn from the awards ceremony.

1. Don’t rush a big announcement.

(Yes I am 100% leading with Taylor Swift because it’s marketing gold.)

Taylor Swift announced a new album, The Tortured Poets Department, last night during the show. Y’all, this is timing gold. She knew she would have a lot of cameras on her and harnessed that opportunity.

She and her team had no doubt been working on the timing of this announcement for MONTHS. A master of her being tight lipped, she wrote and recorded an entire album while on tour and the public had ZERO clue.

The lesson here is to be patient with important announcements, new services/products, or any type of “big” news. As excited as you may be to get all the goodness out into the world immediately, take a breath and make sure you have all your ducks in a row first so it’s truly as impactful as possible.

In this case your ducks are:

→ Email messaging
→ Social media messaging, graphics and timing
→ Press talking points
→ Answers to potential questions stemming from announcement
→ Video announcements recorded and ready to be deployed
→ Back-end infrastructure to handle any requests/purchases that come in as a result of said announcement

2. Never underestimate the power of a second set of eyes.

Even if you are the go-to marketer in your business, get another set of eyes to look at any the announcement materials before you deploy them. Ask that person:

→ How does this make you feel?
→ What impression do you have of our company from seeing this?

If the GRAMMYs had done this, or done it better, maybe someone would have pointed out how badly it looks to not have the four rap category awards included in the televised broadcast. This raised many eyebrows, as it should have, and could have so easily been avoided.

If you say that DE&I is important to you/your brand, which I surely hope it is, then make sure your marketing materials reflect that.

If you say it, live it.

Which leads me to my next point…

3. Always keep that crisis communication plan ready.

I have no doubt the GRAMMYs communications teams are uber busy this morning reviewing the press from the show and discussing a statement to make that doesn’t continue to leave them with egg on their face.

(NOTE: I also believe they had a crisis communication plan ready because they are pros, even if they didn’t necessarily know what the issues might be.)

The show had some wonderful wins last night:

→ Solid host with a non-offensive opening monologue
→ More women spotlighted, performing and awarded for their work
→ Recognizing hard work and talent of musicians on a televised platform
→ Emotional tribute to amazing artists who have left us

However, all it takes is one thread to be loose (i.e. the lack of living DE&I or Jay-Z’s acceptance speech/public chastising) to quickly unravel all the good.

(FWIW, I do think that he has a point worth discussing. I do not think that was the time to do it. Press room would have been more appropriate to me and less of a “let’s make everyone in the room feel uncomfortable even though they had nothing to do with the decisions” moment. That press room footage reaches the masses all the time.)

The lesson:

Whatever statement or brand pillar you want to stand on, be firm in it. Also be prepared to defend it with a calm and rational head via prepared crisis communication plan, rather than in-the-moment emotional responses that only fan the flames.