As my finals ensued I had one 8 to 12 page paper looming over my head. The only assignment for it was that it had to be centered around marketing, and there were no other qualifications. I did tons of research and could never really boil it down to anything that interests me enough, and then one day as I was doing my routine Taylor Swift jam session I remembered an article I had read a long time ago about her. She was a marketing genius. Heck yeah. I knew exactly what to write about. So here is snippets and takeaways from the reasons I concluded that Taylor Swift is a perfect example of marketing excellence and how she always manages to stay completely relevant:

1. She is not only a person, but she is also a brand.

Face it, everyone knows who Taylor Swift is, and they probably have a strong opinion of her. No matter if you like her or not, you talk about her in some way. She is always on a radio station singing something from either when she was 16 or 22; she is everywhere.

2. She is genuine and makes stances.

From dorky dance with Lorde at award shows to single-handedly making Apple change their music policies. She is someone that is hard to hate. It is obvious she has a lot of fun and also genuinely cares about people and music.

3. She keeps widening her market and audience.

Remember when you could only hear her on country stations? Well that is definitely of the past. She used to just market young girls, now my boyfriend and my mom like her almost just as much as I do. She crossed over to pop and now even has a song with a popular rapper on the verses. Genius.

4. She keeps up with style.

I am not just talking clothing style. I am talking style of music and attitude too. She is just classy, and she never goes out of style. Ever. (See what I did there?)

5. She wins at social media.

From Twitter, to Instagram, to Tumblr she is all over, and she loves being able to inform and connect with her fans. It is obvious she cares. She cleverly sets up album and video releases by putting hints on her social media, and she takes feedback and praise in a very graceful way.

6. She is talented.

The biggest problem I had with writing this paper was making claims that all of her actions and music were marketing ploys, because I do not think that is true. Taylor is talented and would have never gotten where she is just by ruling at marketing herself. She is a star, and it shows every day.

My best friend and I discuss her often and it always comes down to: Taylor Swift just understands me.