Twitter replaces blue bird with X - marketers and brand experts respond

Elon Musk rebranding Twitter as X is absolute marketing suicide. Since he took over Twitter in what must be the most misguided takeover of the business in history, Elon Musk has been giving a masterclass in how to kill a brand with death by a thousand cuts. Twitter killer Threads launched just a few weeks ago and gained over 100 million users in a few days, exactly because Twitter was a total basket case you can’t use and adds zero value to advertisers. The best way to have battled this threat from Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta would have been to double down on the brand, build on the legacy and user base Twitter has as the go-to for news and breaking stories and take to the task of fixing all the issues. But what is he doing instead? Rebranding as X, the universal symbol for closing an application. The Twitter brand has been neglected since before he took over and needed some TLC but ditching literally everything is a huge gamble.

Twitter has over 350 million active users, even since Musk's takeover. It makes absolute sense to me that he wants to rebrand away from a social media platform and instead, expand X into an app that integrates with the rest of your life. If people thought $44bn was alot of money to buy Twitter, I think Elon Musk is about to unlock the real value in his purchase, although it might take some time for us to see it. From a branding perspective, it's never a good idea to rebrand on a whim without any real communication around it. And it's dangerous for other businesses to assume that this is how branding is done, because let's face it Elon Musk is an anomaly in pretty much everything he does.

Elon Musk's decision to rebrand Twitter as X comes across as a last-ditch effort to salvage the platform's declining reputation. With the recent successful launch of Threads and a notable exodus of users from the platform, it was evident that he needed to take action. However, I share the sentiment that this rebrand alone may not be enough to address the underlying issues. Twitter has long been plagued by its association with toxicity and harassment. A mere change in logo and name cannot erase the negative perceptions and experiences users have encountered on the platform. While this logo change may garner some positive attention, it won't outweigh the larger systemic problems Twitter faces. The platform's open nature and lack of effective moderation continue to allow the spread of misinformation, hate speech, and abusive behaviour. The rebrand seems like a superficial attempt to create a new narrative and distract from the pressing issues at hand.

Does flipping the bird at Twitter’s distinctive logo break all the equity rules? Ordinarily, yes. But the keyboard warriors waving their How Brands Grow should see it from Elon’s perspective. Currently, the platform is a 2D chat room with a haemorrhaging P&L, but the ambition is to be the next WeChat super-app. When you’ve landed a rocket vertically, you understand that sometimes revolution, not evolution, is how you bring the market to heel.

Against the backdrop of Twitter's ad revenues halving, it's hard to see how this rebrand will improve the site's fortunes. Musk has driven SME advertisers away by enforcing minimum ad spend levels. The take-up of Twitter blue subscriptions is low and perceived as detrimental to a brand's credibility. Twitter needs a new approach that gets businesses spending money on the platform again. Is X going to help in achieving that?

Time will tell if this is madness or genius. Whilst it feels like there is an element of Musk stamping his feet in tantrum after Threads was launched to viral success by Mark Zuckerberg two weeks ago, there is another goal Elon Musk has in mind. Elon Musk owns the skies through Starlink, and he’s making inroads on mapping the surface of the earth through Tesla. Whilst the mapping of roads is confined to roads, if you want to get more granular with the data you own, you need the mobile phones in people’s pockets to help you map in even more detail. Rather than viewing this as a billionaire’s spat between Zuckerberg and Musk, we might want to keep an eye on Musk’s global domination plans.

We all know what happened to Prince after he turned himself into a symbol.

With all of the changes Musk has made, Twitter has started to become a toxic brand. People are leaving it in droves, and the launch of Threads has seemed to accelerate this. Musk sees X as a strategic long-term play to evolve the platform into something more like WeChat, which is a transactional and commerce platform as much as it is a social platform. However, it feels like this sudden change is more reactive to try and place the media focus back onto Musk's plans rather than Zuckerberg's.

This is a very interesting but not particularly surprising move from Elon. A brand that has been around for almost two plus decades being wiped out overnight does not feel like the smartest choice, however, it is very fitting for the controversial entrepreneur. I think this is just the beginning of what is to come for this app.

I feel sorry for the marketing team. Twitter is already an iconic brand, I don't see what more there is to gain from this as a business, but additional unnecessary costs.

The Twitter brand has 17 years behind it, which gives it a lot of value that is being thrown away to enter a market where other apps already exist. As we've seen with Threads, entering that sort of market is difficult.
People might check it out but, in terms of use, people are habitual. People have the experience of Twitter embedded in their lives, they know what it's about and what they will experience. If he keeps that, it could work. And if he's keeping that, he would be wise to keep the Twitter brand. If, what I suspect, Musk is doing is using Twitter to create a ready-made user base like Instagram/Threads that can be ported across to a new platform, it's a risky move, and one that could alienate loyal Twitter users.