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What's to Like about Twitter's Rebrand

8/6/2023

11 Comments

 
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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
​author of 
Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing 

“There’s nothing I like about it,” said a family member after seeing a large brown sun sail I bought to shade our backyard patio.  I actually appreciated the blunt assessment because I also had misgivings about the tarp-looking sail, which fortunately was easy to return.  Many have similarly bemoaned Twitter’s unexpected rebranding, which won’t be as easy as the unappealing patio shade to retract, but are there actually things to like about “X”?
 
Like a quick-moving summer thunderstorm that seems to emerge from nowhere, Twitter’s announcement that it was replacing its acclaimed name and famous bird with the moniker/graphic “X” seemed to catch even the most astute business analysts by surprise.
 
In reality, the curious move was several months, if not years in the making.  This past April new-owner Elon Musk formally changed the company’s legal name to X Corp.  He also had gained ownership of X.com six years earlier, which makes one think that the rebrand was more of a long-term plan than a knee-jerk reaction to Musk-revival and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent launch of Threads.
 
Regardless the timing or the reason, to say the response to Twitter’s rebrand has been critical is certainly an understatement.  Some of the criticism has included:
 
  • ‘”Completely irrational’: By changing Twitter’s name, Elon Musk is wiping out $4 billion to $20 billion in brand value” – Fortune
 
  • “This sudden transformation poses a significant obstacle for marketers who had been relying on the platform as part of their social media strategies.” – Digiday
 
  • “It’s rare for corporate brands to become so intertwined with everyday conversation that they become verbs. It’s rarer still for the owner of such a brand to announce plans to intentionally destroy it.” – AdAge
 
  • “I am concerned that Musk will continue to make random changes to the platform, either alienating more casual users of the service who tend to be people my company would market to, or change the advertising tools that allow us to target users.” – Brian Chevalier-Jordan, CMO at National Business Capital
 
All of the above seem like valid criticisms; however, the last one appears to have forgotten the remarkable number of successful business innovations Musk has to his credit: 
  • The Boring Company
  • Neuralink
  • PayPal
  • Tesla
  • SpaceX
In addition, Musk founded OpenAI in 2015, and more recently he launched a new AI company xAI.
 
All this to say, Musk and those who work with him are likely extremely competent people.  You can’t build the world’s leading brand of electric vehicle and launch people into space without having significant engineering and business acumen.
 
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Given Musk’s elite team members and track record, maybe the rebrand from Twitter to X is some kind of marketing rocket science that’s beyond the ability of casual observers and even most marketing professionals to understand.
 
I have no inside information on Musk’s strategy, but here are a few considerations that may have gone into the surprising decision:


1) Appeal to Gen Z:  Overtime, virtually every brand loses followers simply because its core demographic’s wants and needs change as it gets older and those consumers age out of the market.  So, companies constantly need to be making inroads with the next generation, which is about to age into the market.  
​
As someone who works with many Gen Zs, my sense is that Twitter has been falling out of favor with them, not unlike Facebook has with this young age cohort.  Maybe a younger, hipper feeling brand would help them reconsider.


2) Restore Relevance:  Even consumers whose needs haven’t changed can grow tired of a brand over time.  Most of us experience this kind of satiation effect whether it’s with the music we listen to or the food we eat.  

To avoid stagnation or worse, customers switching to other firms’ products, brands sometimes will attempt a refresh so they’re perceived as new and exciting, like Jell-O did recently for the first time in ten years.
 
Aside for some minor tweaks, it didn’t seem like Twitter had changed much over the last decade, so maybe a major brand refresh was in order, not just for Gen Zs but for every user who was growing bored with the brand.


3) Regain Attention:  Brands want to be top-of-mind, which helps in their ongoing efforts to retain and grow business.  When consumers stop hearing about them, they may stop thinking about them and purchasing from them.  

Simply slipping  out of the news cycle is bad enough; it’s even worse to be replaced by a competitor, which is what happened to Twitter thanks to Meta’s new Threads.
 
These three are realistic reasons for Twitter to consider rebranding, but as the earlier criticisms implied:  Was this refresh worth the very high costs?
 
Perhaps no cost loomed larger than this one AdAge and others identified:  Abandoning the verb to “tweet.”  Very, very few organizations are ever so fortunate as to have their brands turned into verbs, e.g., Google, Photoshop.
 
Of course, firms need to be careful that their brand names aren’t used generically to represent the entire product category (e.g., calling any brand of tissue a Kleenex), which can lead to a firm losing its legal trademark protection.

Still, there is tremendous value to having so much mindshare with consumers that they turn the noun of a company into an action.  It’s hard to imagine that any or all of the three refresh reasons would warrant Twitter abandoning that extremely unique competitive advantage.
​
There’s also a perceptual disconnect between what social media typically stands for and the psychological meaning of “X.”  Social media such as Twitter, tend to be about connecting people and having conversations, whereas “X” often represents the opposite.  For instance, an “X” is often a person with whom one no longer associates, e.g., X-spouse, X-roommate, etc. 
 
Ironically, “X” is also the tiny symbol that people often click on to close a webpage or an app.  In fact, if someone says, “X out of that,” we know they’re giving a command to close something digital.  In short, changing people’s existing interpretations of “X” from negative to positive is a very tall order.
 
Musk is among the most talented entrepreneurs of this generation, and he may deserve to be counted among humanity’s most innovative thinkers, but even business savants sometimes make mistakes, for instance:
  • Henry Ford’s first automobile firm, the Detroit Automobile Company, failed miserably, leading him to bankruptcy.
  • Walt Disney was fired from his job at a newspaper because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”
  • Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple, the company he co-founded.
 
Perhaps hindsight will prove 20/20, and history will exonerate the Twitter/X rebrand a few years or more from now.  Now, though, it looks like it may go down as one of Musk’s bigger mistakes and an unfortunate instance of “Simple-Minded Marketing.”
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11 Comments
Josh Nielsen
9/1/2023 10:46:27 am

I think it was a dumb move to change twitter's name to X. As the blog mentioned, I associate 'X' with leaving, or breaking up with something. I almost wish that they would revert back to the name twitter, as my friends and I still call it twitter. It'll be interesting to see what happens to Musk in the future.

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Audrey
9/9/2023 11:42:57 pm

Funny enough I didn't know this change was made until last week. I haven't used twitter for about a year but re download it for my marketing class. I found the blue app with the bird on my home screen and clicked re download. Later in the day I was looking for the app on my phone and could not find it. I went to the app store and typed in twitter, but nothing came up. I was about to give up but decided to google it. After I googled twitter, all these articles came up about twitter being called X. I was very confused but was now able to find the app on my phone. I clicked on X, and I saw it was still twitter, but did not like that the name was changed. While I agree with number two about restoring relevance this change did not do that for that for me. Over the years I did grow tired of twitter and my needs changed but X was even less appealing to me. It was too much of a drastic change. I don’t think this was a great move for twitter because I am sure there are many others like me who will decide not to use it as much.

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Marcos
9/10/2023 01:42:46 pm

I don't believe the three reasons given in this post are any of the reasons that musk chose to change the brand name. I believe there are greater ambitions behind what musk is doing. Although the three reasons given are good shorter team reasons trying to give the business a little boost, after a while X will fall out of the news, gen x will forget about it and they will not be relevant any more. As well the lose of a brand that literally created a verb out of it is not worth the lose just to gain these small things. I believe that Elon musk is looking into the distance future. As musk continues to grow and acquire more market share in his different company I believe he wants to make X a brand not just with the social media. He already has space X and XAI and I believe he is going to continue growing his companies that have something to do with the letter X. This is going to create a global brand that is bigger than anything twitter could have ever been with markets in social media, space, AI, and many more. Elon musk is sacrificing a little market share and bad media attention now to gain a large presence in the future. Elon musk is smart and would not have done this change without a thought out plan for the future.

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Landon link
9/11/2023 08:21:12 pm

I was very unsure why Elon Musk made the name change from Twitter to X. For me personally, I will always know X as Twitter. I have never used twitter but I have heard and seen many things about it, and I remember being very confused as to why it was now X. I think that Musk's reason to do this is to try to change things up. I know that twitter has not really changed a whole lot since it came out. However, I feel like this was not the right thing to do. Instead, I would've added a new feature or new way to post things or chat with people. I think this would have gotten more attention and I feel like it would draw more people in because people enjoy trying out new features. I personally think the name change was pointless. Me personally, I will always know X as Twitter and when I look at X I just think why?

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Ben
9/12/2023 04:18:09 pm

When I first heard that Twitter was changing to X, I was caught off guard because I had no idea why that change was happening. Interesting enough I didn't have Twitter but I do have X now so maybe Musk is trying to target the younger generation by changing the brand name and awareness towards younger people because the people that have it will most likely keep it. The other thing you could look at it is what Musk is doing with his brand and X. When I hear the letter X I think of Elon Musk and vice versa. Because he has many other companies that have to do with the letter X. Therefore he is building a brand relating to the letter X with many of his companies. So maybe he is fine with the temporary drawback to build a bigger brand then we can see in our short term brains.

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Danuta
9/13/2023 11:52:54 pm

I think the reasons outlined in the article are fair views, but have little basis or evidence. I disagree with the first point, which is appeal to generation Z because in my opinion generation Z are more concerned with staying on trend and having a 'herd like' mentality due to social media. With that, currently the trend is to boycott Elon Musk with his controversial moves of layovers, sudden rebranding, being against flexible work from home policies, naming his kids in odd letters and overall being self-serving and somewhat child-ish, despite being one of the wealthiest and smartest innovators in the world. Gen Z do not understand his actions and have migrated to alternatives like 'Threads' which is basically twitter, but more appealing to Gen Zs simply because it isn't X.

I believe Musk is only staying on brand with who he has been as we have seen portrayed in the media, such as the interesting names he gives his children. This may merely be an attention grabber, for what reason, we would not know. I am confident this change has restored twitter's presence to become more relevant and maintaining Elon's presence in media periodically in time. Elon Musk is just a constant reminder in the background that he exists and is shaping and influencing consumers lifestyles, with power and ability to do anything he wants.

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Tiffany
12/5/2023 04:28:25 pm

I really had no prior knowledge regarding Twitter's big name change, so reading this article greatly informed me on the reasons as to why Musk did what he did. When my hometown church shared with the congregation the retirement of our senior pastor we were all shocked. However what shocked us more was that this had been a plan for the past 10 years. Similarly, Musk bought x.com 6 year prior, so I don't believe this name change was something sudden. I am left with one big question thought, as I'm sure everyone else is too: what are Musk's team's goals relating the name change?

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Averi
12/6/2023 08:34:39 pm

At first, I didn't care what the big whoop was about Twitter being changed to "X". However, I ended up downloading X because I never had Twitter before, so I wanted to see what it was about. This article mentioned the name change to speak to younger generations like Gen Z. I would say it worked and drew attention to itself. Changing the name of such a popular platform is a bold move. I suppose only time will tell if this name sticks around.

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Averi
12/6/2023 08:50:03 pm

I would say this is single-minded because it upholds stakeholder values by drawing attention to itself, but it doesn't uphold societal values because the people are confused by this happening.

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