Elon Musk’s Twitter Rebrand Sets Stage For Everything App ‘X’ To Takeoff, Experts Say—Here’s How

Topline

Elon Musk’s abrupt decision to do away with Twitter’s iconic blue bird and rebrand as “X” erased one of social media’s most recognizable brands overnight and potentially killed billions in brand value, but marketing and branding experts told SME the unconventional and seemingly reckless strategy signals the start of Musk’s promised “everything app” and could have more to it than meets the eye.

Elon Musk is building an app that does everything called X.

AFP via Getty Images

The Key Facts

Musk’s Twitter rebrand is an “exceptionally risky move” as it jettisons 15 years of brand value and forces him to build a new brand from scratch, Forrester vice president and research director Mike Proulx told SME, a task he said is “no small feat.”

That brand value diminished since Musk’s takeover but was far from insignificant, Robert Haigh, director of brand valuation consultancy Brand Finance told SME, noting that Twitter was still a multi-billion-dollar brand at the time Musk pivoted to “X,” much of which could have been saved with a “carefully managed” migration plan.

Musk’s “rapid abandonment” of Twitter without a clear plan in place “almost certainly” destroyed a good deal of brand value, Haigh echoed, noting that the billionaire could have learned a lot from Mark Zuckerberg’s careful introduction of Meta.

Experts in branding and marketing said it’s probably best to make a complete break with Twitter, and the bird-based baggage that comes along with its brand. SME, a sort of symbolic sacrifice to wipe the slate clean and set the stage for the “everything app,” X, Musk wants to build.

It’s likely there is more to Twitter’s rapid revamp than meets the eye, Sam Ashken, a senior strategy director at brand consultancy Interbrand, told SME, noting that Musk is one of the “most skillful manipulators of social media in the world” for whom “outrage and apparent recklessness is often part of the point.”

Vicky Bullen, chief executive of branding and design agency Coley Porter Bell, concurred and said that while Musk’s “odd” approach “seems reckless on the surface,” it has achieved what many brands take months to do “virtually overnight.”

News Peg

Musk teased his decision to replace Twitter’s iconic bird—Larry—and other branding linked to the platform with “X” over the weekend and rapidly got underway on Monday. The change was unsurprising—Musk has been open about his ambition to build an “everything app” like China’s WeChat and has already changed the business name to X Corp—but it was sudden. The new logo, a stylized white “X” on a black background, was unconventionally crowdsourced from his followers on the platform, which replaced profile images on Twitter’s official accounts and was projected onto the company’s headquarters. Efforts to remove the Twitter sign outside the company’s San Francisco headquarters were stymied by police, reportedly after the crane being used blocked the street.

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Source:: Social Media Explorer