The Marketing Bestie Podcast with zoeunlimited - I’m skinnier and nobody cares

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

why is meghan trainor suddenly sabrina carpenter, paris hilton and tate mcrae 2.0?NEVER start a presentation from scratch again. Try Gamma for FREE https://taap.it/freegamma✍🏻FREE EMAIL LIST https://tapx.it/stanzoeunlimitedLearn & Grow with me.💖 Instagram: https://tapthe.link/zoeunlimitedig💜 TikTok: https://tapthe.link/zoeunlimitedtiktok🖤 Listen on Apple & Spotify: https://tapthe.link/zoeunlimitedapple https://tapthe.link/zoeunlimitedspotify🪭 All my outfits https://tapthe.link/zoeunlimitedltk👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn https://tapthe.link/zoeunlimitedlinkedin🛒 Amazon Essentials https://tapthe.link/zoeunlimited👉use code ZOEUNLIMITED for 10% off ALL travels on Klook https://t.ly/aA76T📧 Business inquiries: [e-mail] //🕙Timestamps: 0:00 Intro4:10 Meghan 1.06:32 Meghan 2.07:06 Marketing Misstep 18:50 Marketing Misstep 210:58 Marketing Misstep 312:00 Branding SOS

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Is no one going to talk about what's going on with Megan Trainor and what this is? If you had to guess who is standing behind me right now, who would you say? Because if it was Sabrina Carpenter, you would be wrong. Like, hey, we didn't sell enough tickets, so we're canceling. I did look at the ticket sales and they were not great. Cancelled her entire upcoming tour. Everything is different now. It's hard to get anyone to hear your music.

I'm going at every radio station I can. It is being like, no one is showing up for her in general. Right. Please. Please. Please. I think girls will really relent to it. All my stuff is really really,

relatable. If there was someone born to be likable, it must be Megan Trainor. Sweet voice, sweet smile, sweet Michelle, sweet Michelle, sweet Michelle, sweet talent. A lot of people don't know that I wrote Sabrina Carpenter's first song. And being the nice girl. The girl's girl pays well. 30 million dollars in fact. And you know, Bill-Bore Grammys, people's choice. But somehow, there is still a way to mess everything up. The Megan Trainor reheat Tate McCrae's nachos. Internet's new favorite hate.

Her music is stuck in 2014. I just don't think this is authentic. She knows it's not authentic. The tour sales knew it wasn't authentic. So cringe. It's just pure cringe. A copy and paste of Sabrina Carpenter. How did the favorite girl's girl suddenly become unlikable? I got babies!

No, it's not just because of a Zempeg or a boob job. Megan Traynor has a serious personal branding problem. Be fucking for real. It's all marketing. Like this person said, quote, I haven't heard a Megan Trainor song since like 2013. First, same, second. When she came up on my fee for a hot second, I thought, Isn't this Paris Hilton?

And then I looked at her music video, saw the baby doll aesthetic and was like, Sabrina? The reason you thought it was Sabrina Carpenter is the exact reason Megan Trainor just had to cancel her tour. Even worse, when I gave Shimmer a listen, I was like, Tate McCray. And then when you look at the dance, Chris Olson, what led to this marketing crisis? As your marketing bestie, who graduated top 1% UCLA business economics with a background in marketing, we're going to explore how being hotter can still fail you if you have a bad brand. It looks like was given to like a high school marketing class.

By brand, I don't just mean slap in your face on a poster. It is how your future college, future boss, future boyfriend sees you. And yes, you have one. It's kind of painfully obvious why tickets weren't selling. I'm creating the series to analyze pop culture icons from, a marketing perspective and thought my notes might be helpful to you. And what may be extra helpful to you, especially if you're a student, marketer, or someone who just likes to work smarter, is to create any presentation in minutes.

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Let me introduce you to fans. and they're here with me on Spotify. Trust me, I know fans. They don't skip, they stay for hours. They don't move on, they manifest. They're not a demographic group, they're fans. Spotify advertising. You're among fans.

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To keep our community small to ambitious people who want to understand pop culture through a smarter branding perspective, please do not subscribe if you do not want to expand your mind. So how is the internet's most like? girl losing $30 million worth of girl's girl power through three branding missteps. That's allegedly making her cancel her tour of 33 concerts because not enough tickets are selling. She was not selling any tickets. But the ultimate question is, can the internet fall back in love with Megan Trainor again? Let's take it back to

What if nobody comes? Megan 1.0 was not like the other girls. As her mother described, Traynor, quote, did a lot of playing by year. by year and played music without formal training. But as the prodigy she is, between 15 and 17, she already independently released. Not just one, not just two, but three albums. Even with such a talent.

Her father said, quote, she thought she was one of the chubby girls who would never be an artist. So she continued writing songs for artists like Sabrina Carpenter until all about a bass. Which got her signed 20 minutes after performing it for a label chairman and that song shot her up to number one on basically everything.

Certified Diamond, Billboard, Grammys. Why did it work from a marketing POV? Well, at this time, you have two lanes for the main pop girls. The untouchable, hot or cool girl. Rihanna, Beyonce, Katie Perry, Taylor Swift. And then you have the indie Tumblr Sad Girl. Lana Dahl-Ray and Lord. What was Megan?

The loud theater kid suburban girl who still wanted to be bubble gum femininity. It was goofy, bright, loud, cartoonish, hyper-feminine, and almost aggressively cheerful. It was anti- Cool. My big thing is I say it out loud. And that made it cool. I was like, done.

Let's go. Perfectly timed with the rise of the body positivity movement, whereby association, she became the face of the movement. And like hitting a gold mine, the more relatable she leaned towards, the more her brand sold. When I talk about like my mental health or my body positivity, they're like, same. Being a girl's girl pace. But there is a price, subtle foreshadowing.

So the song is about loving your body, but have you always left your body? No. I wrote the song as a, wow, I really wish I thought like this. You can write a movement for a while, but you can't write it for life. Very quickly, the freshness of the anti-cool, the body positivity songs faded. And what's left, aged not very gracefully. It's cheesy, suburban, overly eager, and what many describe as, quote, music for moms and Target, which there is nothing wrong with.

But Megan began to panic. She began chasing Cool. So how cool does she become? The TikTok videos alone, for instance, like one of them I thought was AI. I thought someone had just made a dancing video of Megan Trainor, dressed in Sabrina Carpenter. Well, Megan 2.0 is all about being cool. First, she got rid of the base that got her fan base, then changed the lyrics. From, quote, yeah, it's pretty clear I ain't no size 2, to quote, yeah, it's pretty clear.

I got some new boobs and then revealed she quote did not believe in the message of all about the base when she wrote it. First, there's nothing wrong with a glow-up and people really don't need to be mean for someone choosing to look a certain way. But from a branding angle, why is it that some glow-ups make you? Yet others break you. Hence, marketing is step one. Extreme positivity. The issue is not the OZempic, the Botox, fillers, the boob job, but that her entire brand was. her body and how it did not fit into the ideal.

Conventional beauty was marketed as the enemy of the brand. That extremism left no room for change. But the common hatred for the Pretty Barbie did generate over a billion streams and over 17 million followers. However, if you take the foundation of a house away, it will crumble if you take the foundation of a brand away. It will also crumble. Megan 1.0 was so successful because everything was in absolutes. She was absolutely not conforming to the male gaze, absolutely anti-skinny, absolutely anti-anything unnatural.

But now, a skinny blonde doll, let's be a doll, like toy with me, I'll be a little doll. With beautiful new chesticles, Botox, and fillers doing thirst trap dances. It's not just about killing the performative relatability, but is a direct slap in the face to those who follow her for her body positivity. All my stuff is really relatable, which puts Megan in a very awkward position. Megan Juan Bono was not an aspirational brand.

A little girl might say, she wants to grow up to be Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodriguez, Lana, or Taylor. But they don't usually say, I want to be just like Megan Trainor. But that's okay, of course they like her for being a girl's girl. Which was just a performance. So now,

the relatability is all lost, but no aspiration is built. Like this person asked, quote, who is her audience? One said, the Kardashians intro music and another target shoppers? Wait, wait, we can fix that, right? We can manufacture cool.

Hence, marketing misstep two. Copy. The music isn't performing that well and nobody is going to pay tickets in this economy to watch someone put a wig on that looks like Sabrina Carpenter. You cannot out Paris, Paris Hilton, out Sabrina, Sabrina Carpenter. Though it might just be a small glintz But again, a brand is not how you see you, but how the rest of the world perceives you. I mean, spot the difference.

And right now, Megan Trainers brand feels a little unoriginal and a little desperate. It's in the visual branding of the album, her outfits, her hair, the thirst traps, and even the dances. They look like they're trying to make it a TikTok dance trend. Like, don't you just want to dance to this? Everything is following a trend to be in with the kids, but giving for a lack of a better word, boomer, making the kids just want to stay as far away as possible. Though everything might be fully original,

the perception of copying everything from everyone else further breaks Megan away from the image of a girl's girl and further disappoints her remaining fans, which shows in the lack of ticket sales and her getting girl tour. But to make things worse, worse. Low ticket sales is not the end of the world. Canceling tour or lowering the price is not the end of the world. But canceling it than making it an excuse to say it was for quote family reasons and prioritizing motherhood to cover up the fact that tickets didn't sell is terrible PR. We all know what

the reason is and it's low ticket sales. You can't just one major artist give us the truth and not some BS excuse. Especially when her brand is all about not caring about what other people think and about embracing motherhood, not using motherhood as a cover for low-ticket sales. It only reinforces a new image of someone both desperate for public validation and fearful of public judgment, which I get it who can't relate. But it just makes her brand less and less aspirational, less and less likable, which leads to marketing misstep three. Confusion. As an old saying in marketing goes, if you confuse, you lose. 2014 to 2016 Megan was retro pop body positivity that spoke to teen girls millennials

22 to 23 Megan was the relatable mom wife author speaking to the audience of millennial moms then 2026 we got sexy pop girl TikTok trend hunter that I think was supposed to target gen Csies were younger but unfortunately came off as forced and cringe when you feel lost towards your brand identity one way to go about it is to ask yourself what is the target demo you are trying to serve. Notice how I said serve, not take away from. If your core brand is just about look at me, I'm hot, you'll have resistance in the case of Megan Trainor and Blake lively. Even the hottest girls like Bella Hadid give value. In terms of kindness and aesthetic inspiration, giving makes you likable. This leads to the

million dollar question. What can Megan give as the branding SOS to help her get out of this situation? First, find the unique value proposition, UVP. Relatability for Megan is out, at least for now. But what is something else that only Megan can provide? Artists survive long term by becoming archetypes world's subcultures. Examples. Lady Gaga is a theatrical monster prop. Lana D'Rae, the Americana Melancholy.

Chaparone, the queer camp princess. Megan could have owned. Camp femininity, suburban pop satire, retro maximalism, comedic female empowerment. Instead, she chose to go see. compete in the same lane as everyone else, making her a messy sheen version of Paris Hilton, Sabrina Carpenter, Tate McCray, and TikTok trends combined. But speaking of her unique value. Second, reclaim the song writing identity. This is her biggest on-tap asset and nobody's talking about it. Before she was a pop star, she was a songwriter who could write for

any genre. She had publishing deals in Nashville, wrote for Rascal Flats. And her guitar teacher said she could quote, write a pop song every day of the week like pouring water. I heard came together super quickly, right? It was produced in a very short time. So vast. While I was doing the Halo Awards, which was like two days after, I had to edit the video on the side too. It was crazy. That is her shining point to create songs instead of imitating trends and writing for TikTok. Speaking of strengths. Third, downsize the tour and actually do it. There are certain artists who are even better alive. And I think Megan Traynor falls into the performance.

category. Each concert is actually the best marketing to reinforce her brand as a talented artist and to connect with the fans that still support her, which is why the direct cancellation of 33 concerts is just another blow to the already shaky relationship with her fan base. Instead of the era's tour model, big stadiums with sky high prices that I'd assume her management wants, why not make it intimate and make sure everyone have the best time? 2,000 C venues, good deals for families, great merch, and a fizzy party atmosphere. The best marketing is through emotions and when people have a good time, you bet they'll just organically share through the word of mouth or organic TikToks.

That is how to go viral, not by chasing trends or doing TikTok dances. As one analyst puts it plainly, a Megan trainer to war should be, quote, a fun and affordable night out for young girls and their moms. Oh no, Megan has to stop apologizing. for being Megan Trainor. That insecurity is what the audiences feel. And there's no need to be a girl's girl for the sake of being a girl's girl

if that's no longer natural to the artist. As people we grow, it's understandable. But just as how Rome was not built in one day, a brand takes years to build and one false move to ruin. However, with the right intentions and clarity, nothing cannot be rebuilt. Just look at Addison Ray, cringy TikTok girl to iconic pop girl.

But let me know your thoughts on if Megan Trainor can rebrand to arise. Or is stuck in 2014. If you want to understand pop culture through a smarter branding perspective, follow the pot for more. Give it a five-star review. It's free and will help the show help you. This is your marketing bestie Zoe Unlimited. Episodes are available on all podcast networks, Apple, Spotify, YouTube.

And if you didn't hate this episode, I know you might not hate these other two I made just for you.