Tale of Whoa
“What’s your first reaction to Twitter’s rebrand to X?” “Possibly, the biggest unforced error in branding history.” And that, of the many available methods, is one way to jump down the rabbit hole of becoming part of the public conversation. The end result of my discussion with the SF Examiner’s stellar reporter, Benjamin Pimentel, is reprinted below, in case you’re interested.
But what he and I never really got around to discussing was the thing that really makes this unnecessary squander of a good opportunity so Shakespearean in its hubris: the fact that the error was preceded, perhaps made inevitable by, all the self-inflicted wounds that came before.
Veteran SF ad exec: Twitter rebrand historic ‘unforced error’
Jul 24, 2023 Updated 8 hrs ago
Twitter has been renamed “X,” marking yet another quirky turn in the recent history of the once iconic company which Elon Musk acquired for $44 billion last year.
The San Francisco tech company announced its new name Sunday with a post from CEO Linda Yaccarino who said, ”X is here! Let’s do this!” The announcement followed Musk ‘s own post over the weekend, declaring, “And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”
Removal of Twitter’s name and logo from the company’s Mid-Market headquarters began on Monday.
Veteran San Francisco advertising executive Jef Loeb called the move “the biggest unforced error in branding history.” But Musk “kind of had to do it,” Loeb told The Examiner.
Twitter has steadily sunk into chaos after Musk took over. He slashed the company’s workforce, including veteran engineers and staff overseeing content moderation. The social network was criticized for a sharp spike in hate speech and misinformation, which inevitably drove away advertisers.
Musk himself said two weeks ago that Twitter had lost about half of its advertising revenue, and that the company has struggled with “negative cash flow” and a “heavy debt load.”
“He’s basically driven this thing to a point of chaos that his best strategy is to change the name,” Loeb said. “It hasn’t been Twitter since he bought it. He bought the company but he didn’t buy into the brand. He didn’t buy into the business model. He didn’t buy into any of that. Twitter was never his brand. X is his brand.”
In fact, Twitter had ceased to exist as a legal entity after it merged earlier this year into a separate company owned by Musk called X Corp. Musk had also set up a company called X.com in the 1990s which led to the creation of PayPal.
Last month, Musk named former NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO. She declared that the social media giant’s goal is to become “the world’s most accurate real-time information source and a global townsquare for communication.
But many critics were unimpressed, saying that Twitter had degenerated into a platform for hate speech and misinformation under Musk.
“In Elon’s view, the part of Twitter he likes is an untrammeled, unregulated, unmoderated platform for free speech, where hate speech can thrive successfully,” Loeb said.
Still, the Twitter rebrand could work if Musk is “willing to support Twitter as an organization at whatever losses with his vast fortune over the next two or three years,” Loeb said.
“If you’re a Twitter fan, if you’re invested in the brand, this is a catastrophic change,” he said. “If you are at it from Elon’s perspective, you’re probably saying, ‘Gottta do it. Gotta cut my losses. Gotta move on.’ “
P.S. Waking up on Monday, we decided to not hide our real feelings about the rebrand. This was posted as part of our ongoing series of “fortune cookies” ads: