Twitter has experienced a fair amount of tumult since Elon Musk bought the company at the end of 2022 and there’s more to come, as the company will undergo a rebranding from Twitter to X.
Musk announced on Twitter — er, 𝕏 — on Sunday that the new logo would be going live to replace the iconic blue bird that has been the face of the company since 2010.
With it comes Musk’s vision to transform the Twitter we know into something new — what he’s hoping will be an app for “everything.”
Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino noted in a tweet that X will “go further, transforming the global town square.” She added that the app seeks to be “the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services and opportunities.”
When asked by a user what tweets will now be called, Musk responded with “x’s.”
The details of what X as an “everything app” will entail — and how that might have an impact on marketing — have yet to be shaken out. However, when it comes to initial thoughts on the rebranding effort, several healthcare marketers expressed some level of doubt.
“I would say I have a healthy amount of skepticism,” said Chuck Hemann, president of integrated activation at Real Chemistry, a 2023 MM+M Agency 100 honoree.
Twitter’s woes since Musk’s takeover have included a pullback on content moderation, Musk’s beef with news outlets including NPR and a fake tweet from a parody Eli Lilly account that spurred major concerns around brand safety on the site among pharma companies.
In the meantime, Twitter’s U.S. ad revenue dropped 59% year-over-year, signaling that advertisers are hesitant to return to the app.
The rebrand feels a bit like a “misdirection” against all those challenges — which of course include Meta’s recent launch of Threads as a Twitter alternative, Hemann said. Still, it’s unlikely a new logo will be enough to salvage the platform’s recent blows to its reputation.
“Platforms have success adding new features when the core platform is beloved and utilized, and the value proposition for why you would use that platform is very clear,” Hemann said. “I’m not sure [Twitter’s rebrand] changes the core problems with the platform if brands are already wondering, ‘Why am I here?’”
Pete Levin, SVP of paid search and paid social at Publicis Health Media, another 2023 MM+M Agency 100 honoree, echoed Hemann’s concern that a rebrand won’t address brand safety issues. If anything, it might even be detrimental to the platform as a whole and further shake user and brand trust.
“As new social platforms emerge, the rebrand has the potential to depreciate one of Twitter’s main benefits: its long standing brand recognizability,” Levin said.
Meanwhile, Jody Van Swearingen, SVP and group creative director at AbelsonTaylor, another 2023 MM+M Agency 100 honoree, expressed concern from a creative standpoint.
“My first response as a creative director is that X works very well if Musk’s aim is to kill the platform,” she said.
Analysts and brand agencies have estimated that the decision to do away with Twitter in favor of X wiped out between $4 billion to $20 billion in brand value.
All of this might not have an immediate impact on healthcare brands, as the industry wasn’t necessarily heavily invested in Twitter as its main marketing channel anyway . Typically, platforms like Facebook, Instagram and even TikTok have posed more opportunities in the healthcare space.
While Twitter has historically served as a useful place for physicians and patients to interact — and for healthcare brands to leverage key opinion leaders to spread information about treatments — “it wasn’t necessarily a place where you advertised to get people to engage,” Hemann said.
Besides, taking the route of “when in doubt, change the logo and brand name” won’t be enough to re-attract advertisers.
Hemann added that a rebrand won’t overcome fundamental problems in business strategy, overall marketing strategy, the ability to service customers, or — in the case of healthcare — get information to physicians and patients in the way that they need.
As a result, X will need to do more to convince healthcare marketers to get invested in the app, according to Jennifer Vance, associate director of social media at Fingerpaint Group, another 2023 MM+M Agency 100 honoree.
“Data privacy, engagement enhancements, content moderation and ad targeting capabilities are just a few areas that influence a marketer’s decision to activate on a social platform,” Vance said. “Platform success lies in demonstrating a commitment to fixing what hasn’t been working and making improvements from there.”
When it comes to X being an app for “everything” — while that might sound exciting — it could be pretty difficult for any one platform to pull off.
“I would be leery of any commentary that suggests it will be everything to all people or an end-all,” Hemann explained. “The internet doesn’t work that way. Engagement and conversation doesn’t happen in one place — it’s spread out.”
“I will say this – it’s never a dull situation over there,” he added.
On Sunday night, Musk tweeted a photo of the Twitter headquarters with a giant “X” logo projected onto the building. By Monday afternoon, there were reports of the Twitter sign being removed from the building before police stepped in.
