You don’t have to be a Taylor Swift fan to have heard the news that she and football player Travis Kelce got engaged. It was the proposal heard around the world, and now that Swift’s new album The Life of a Showgirl is out, America just awaits its version of a royal wedding. How did the brands at the center of the occasion fare with the viral moment? And what lessons can marketers glean for highly anticipated nuptials ahead? We used Explore+ to analyze brand performance and uncover insights marketers across industries need to know.
Unless otherwise noted, the data below analyzes relevant conversations across various channels, including digital news, radio, podcasts, forums, websites, blogs, and social media platforms, such as X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and others, from August 26 to September 18, 2025.
Which brands got the biggest buzz from the Swift-Kelce engagement?
Swift’s (and Kelce’s) engagement announcement involved four key brands: Artifex Fine Jewelry (her ring), Ralph Lauren (her dress), Louis Vuitton (her shoes), and Cartier (her watch).
This Instagram post by @einsider and @enews generated more than $1.6 million in Estimated Media Value (EMV).
Across sources, discussions of the betrothal mentioned these brands about 15,000 times, generating about 975,000 engagement (the online kind) actions. About 17% of that overall engagement came from an Instagram post by E! Insider and E! News highlighting the brands in Swift’s engagement photos.
Of the four brands, mentions of Artifex Fine Jewelry achieved the highest share of voice and engagement actions, followed by Ralph Lauren. Artifex also achieved the highest share of Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE), or the approximate monetary value of earned media efforts, at 54.2% or just over $334 million. A significant portion of this value was generated by a New York Fashion Week and Fashion Week Instagram post mentioning all four brands, with the customary close-up shot of the ring.
The AVE Artifex generated was significant on its own, but especially considering that 74.5% of the discussion around the ring did not mention the brand at all. And though mentions of Artifex spiked the day of the engagement on August 26, they petered out by August 30, even as discussion of the ring continued.
How did Foreigner capitalize on the Swift-Kelce engagement?
Of course, the brands Swift wore for her engagement shoot weren’t the only entities to capitalize on the moment. Jimmy Fallon, Martha Stewart, the band Foreigner, Flavor Flav, and Buffalo Wild Wings were among those who used the occasion to gain some visibility via social media content.
This Instagram post by @ForeignerMusic generated about $560,000 in EMV.
For example, Foreigner, known for 70s and 80s hits like “Feels Like the First Time” and “I Want to Know What Love Is,” used the engagement to re-emerge in the pop culture conversation. The band’s September 3 posts on X, Facebook, and Instagram formally offered to be the couple’s wedding band.
On Instagram alone, that post generated over a half million dollars in EMV, helping attract followers and significantly boosting the Foreigner Instagram account’s average engagement rate for September. Considering 60% of female participants and 73% of participants in the TSwift engagement conversation are between 13 and 17 years old, Foreigner’s well-timed post likely helped introduce them to a new generation of music fans.
What can marketers learn from the Swift-Kelce engagement?
Swift and Kelce’s marriage story is only just beginning, but it has already revealed valuable marketing lessons for brands in and beyond the wedding sector:
- Just because you’re seen doesn’t mean you’re known. Visual visibility during viral moments doesn’t automatically translate into brand name prominence. The next time one of your products is involved in a cultural touchstone, media outlets are your ticket to seizing the opportunity. We see this time and time again, from the fashion publications that promoted Celine as the brand behind Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl jeans to the entertainment outlets that publicized Leuchtturm as the brand behind the notebook Chappell Roan read from at the Grammys. Ultimately, it was media coverage from E! and other outlets that helped surge social buzz around Artifex Fine Jewelry by name. With every digital moment examined under a microscope, brands involved, even peripherally, need to leverage earned media to make the most of virality.
- Creativity and cultural intelligence can beat proximity. On the surface, Foreigner’s social post, coming from a dad rock band beloved by Boomers nearly a full week after the engagement, shouldn’t have gone viral. Yet, it resulted in a massive brand win for the group, all thanks to its humor and clever angle on the occasion. Because Swift’s audience has long been largely composed of young girls, “Swiftie dads” are a known presence at her concerts. Media outlets from the Toronto Star to GQ have covered the phenomenon for years. Plus, Swift’s involvement with her fiance’s football career have only given Swiftie dads even more opportunity to bond with their Swiftie daughters. In that context, Foreigner’s post was smartly on brand, and it paid off in a surge of engagement. Use social and consumer intelligence solutions to gain a deeper understanding of your audience’s interests so that you’re ready when the next viral opportunity comes up.
