The X factor: Will Elon Musk’s rebranding of Twitter hurt the social media giant?

It’s finally official. Twitter is now X. After Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino announced the rebranding of the social media map on Sunday, Elon Musk on Monday unveiled the ‘X’ symbol to replace the famed blue bird logo. Musk tweeted:

Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app. This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing.

The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2023

At Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, meanwhile, workers were seen removing the iconic bird and logo Monday until police showed up and stopped them because they didn’t have the proper permits and didn’t tape off the sidewalk to keep pedestrians safe if anything fell. As of early afternoon, the “er” at the end of Twitter remained visible. The haphazard erasure of both the physical and virtual remnants of Twitter’s past were in many ways typical of the chaotic way Musk has run the company since his reluctant purchase. But what does it mean for the social media platform? Let’s take a closer look:  Why is Musk doing this? Musk, CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter X and had already renamed Twitter’s corporate name to X Corp. after he bought it in October. In response to questions about what tweets would be called when the rebranding is done, Musk said they would be called Xs. The billionaire is also CEO of rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX. And he started an artificial intelligence company this month called xAI to compete with ChatGPT. In 1999, he founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal. Additionally, he calls one of his sons, whose mother is singer Grimes, “X.”

The child’s actual name is a collection of letters and symbols.

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Musk’s Twitter purchase and rebranding are part of his strategy to create what he’s dubbed an “ everything app ” similar to China’s WeChat, which combines video chats, messaging, streaming and payments. “You basically live on WeChat in China because it’s so usable and helpful to daily life, and I think if we can… get close to that at Twitter, it would be an immense success,” he told a company town hall meeting in June last year. “There’s a lot of speculation as to Musk’s motives [regarding Twitter], but one thing that commentators seem to align on, is that it appears on face value to be straight out of his ‘break it until you make it’ playbook seen in the early days of both Tesla and SpaceX,” Kirsty Minns, executive creative director at Mother Design, told Fast Company. Musk has made a number of drastic changes since taking over Twitter, including a shift to focusing on paid subscriptions, but he doesn’t always follow through on his attention-grabbing new policy pronouncements. Yaccarino, who Musk hired last month, said Sunday that the social media platform was on the cusp of broadening its scope.

X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) July 23, 2023

  Some predicted the new name will confuse much of Twitter’s audience, which has already been souring on the social media platform following Musk’s other modifications, including limiting the number of tweets users can read each day. The new threshold is part of an $8-per-month subscription service Musk rolled out earlier this year in an attempt to boost Twitter revenue. Experts tear apart move  Experts told Bloomberg that Musk’s Twitter rebrand wiped out between $4 billion and $20 billion of value from the social media company. Bloomberg quoted Steve Susi, director of brand communication at Siegel & Gale, as saying “It took 15-plus years to earn that much equity worldwide, so losing Twitter as a brand name is a significant financial hit.” This comes after financial services firm Fidelity in May estimated that Twitter is only worth around 33 per cent of what Musk paid for it – around $14 billion. Meanwhile, BBC quoted Brand Finance as saying the Twitter brand itself is worth around $3.9bn – 32 per cent lower since 2022 – due to Musk’s “aggressive business approaches”. [caption id=“attachment_12907102” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Elon Musk’s obsession with the letter ‘X’ can be traced back to the 1990s. Reuters File Photo[/caption] Todd Irwin, founder of brand agency Fazer, told Bloomberg the Twitter brand is one of the most recognisable on social media. Allen Adamson, co-founder of the marketing and brand consulting group Metaforce, said it is a “completely irrational from a business and brand point of view.”

Adamson described it as an ‘ego decision on Musk’s part.

“To me, it’s going to go down in history as one of the fastest unwinding of a business and brand ever,” he added. Speaking to BBC, Shuba Srinivasan, marketing professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, said this was an ’especially risky move’ given the competition the social media company faces. “The rebranding is likely to confirm the fear of many Twitter users that the acquisition by Musk signalled the end of the Twitter they knew,” she said. “I didn’t think there was a brand problem and brand identity problem as much as a leadership problem,” Srinivasan added. Pau Dueñas, former partner at Morillas, one of leading branding agencies in Europe told Fast Company, “He may have a different vision for the company, but he should be able to articulate a plan, share it, push for it, and communicate thoroughly to make it happen, and not have to fight with all, neither make such noise that does not add value to anybody,” Dueñas says. A piece on Raconteur.net noted, “Twitter is not the first to attempt a rebrand to paper over strategic cracks. Branding history is littered with companies wanting to put the past behind them or signal a new direction with a name change. Most of these happen at the corporate level, with the aim of showing investors that things are changing.” The piece quoted the RBS Group changing its name to NatWest Group as well as Philip Morris, Facebook, Google, Royal Mail and WeightWatchers as recent examples. “Usually, however, they only serve to highlight what customers and investors already know: there are problems in the business that its leaders would rather move on from,” the piece added. “It’s the end of an era, and a clear signal that the Twitter of the past 17 years is gone and not coming back,” said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst with Insider Intelligence. “But the writing was on the wall: Musk has been vocal about transforming Twitter into platform X from the start, and Twitter was already a shell of its former self.” Esther Crawford, a former head of product at Twitter, said the change amounted to a form of “corporate seppuku,” referring to the Japanese ritual suicide for samurais. Such a move was “usually committed by new management in pursuit of cost-savings due to a lack of understanding about the core business or disregard for the customer experience,” she added. Vanitha Swaminathan, professor of marketing at the University of Pittsburgh, warned that there was a real risk of further damage against the company. “Every time there is a name change, customers generally don’t like change of any kind,” she said. [caption id=“attachment_12910692” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Soon after Elon Musk rebranded Twitter to X some employees at the San Francisco office tried to take the Twitter logo down, and got a crane to do so. However, because of a misunderstanding, the San Francisco police had to get involved, and detain a couple of employees[/caption] “But in this case, if they really want to move in a different direction, or they want to lose some of the negative PR, this is a good way to give yourself a new start,” she added. Twitter users also pointed out that few people refer to Alphabet, Google’s parent company since 2015. Facebook renamed itself Meta in 2021, but its collection of apps — Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook — still retain their own brands and logos. Twitter’s recognizable blue bird logo went live more than a decade ago in 2012, replacing an earlier bird logo ahead of the company’s Wall Street debut as a publicly traded company. “I’m sad to see it go. It had a great run,” said the logo’s designer, Martin Grasser. “But 11 years, 12 years is really long for a corporate identity to stick around. It feels like the platform is changing and they have a new direction and it makes sense” that they would pick a new logo to signal those changes. Grasser wrote that it was intended to be “simple, balanced, and legible at very small sizes. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who signed off on the design in 2012, replied to Grasser with an emoji of a goat, meaning “greatest of all time.” What do advertisers think? Since Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October, the platform’s advertising business has collapsed as marketers soured on Musk’s management style and mass firings at the company that gutted content moderation.

Musk last week said Twitter has lost roughly half of its advertising revenue since he took the reins.

Whether advertisers will ever return depends on how successful the rebranding is and whether Musk is able to accomplish his goal of creating an “everything app.” That remains to be seen, said ad expert Mark DiMassimo. “Advertisers care about what they’re buying. So if his strategies work, I don’t think advertisers could care less about what he calls it,” DiMassimo said. “I think changing the name is just a way for him to say, ‘Stop having Twitter expectations, this is a new thing, judge it as a new thing,’” he added. “And you know, that only works if the new thing works.” Ad industry analysts remain less than certain about X’s prospects. “Musk supporters will likely celebrate the rebrand, but it’s a gloomy day for many Twitter users and advertisers,” Enberg said. “Twitter’s corporate brand is already heavily intertwined with Musk’s personal brand, with or without the name X, and much of Twitter’s established brand equity has already been lost among users and advertisers.” But not everyone agrees with this take. ‘Much-needed rebranding’ Yanhui Zhao, a professor of marketing at the University of Nebraska Omaha, told BBC rebrands can find success – especially so if a firm wants to change tack. Zhao, who examined 215 rebranding announcements by public companies, determined that over half saw positive outcomes. “This is a much-needed rebranding because of the strategic re-direction of Twitter,” Zhao told BBC over email. Irwin told Bloomberg Elon’s personal brand might help matters.

“His personal brand might be more powerful than the Twitter brand,” Irwin concluded.

Hudson-Powell, partner at Pentagram, London, similarly told Fast Company,: “At this point Elon is the brand, and the act [of changing the bird and the HQ logo] was very on-brand, it plays well with his audience.” Twitter is thought to have around 200 million daily active users, but it has suffered repeated technical failures since Musk sacked much of its staff. Facebook parent Meta this month launched its text-based platform, called Threads, which has up to 150 million users, according to some estimates. But the amount of time users spend on the rival app has plummeted in the weeks since its launch, according to data from market analysis firm Sensor Tower. With inputs from agencies