First appeared in Western Journal
By Aron Solomon
There’s little good that can come from tweets sent at 3 a.m., especially on a weekend.
This is a life lesson yet to be learned by Elon Musk, who told his Twitter team and the world that he planned to change the name, logo and brand of the social media company.
The chances are high that Musk’s actions will damage or destroy Twitter’s brand equity — a remarkably shortsighted business decision given the rocky road Twitter has traversed since the dawn of the Musk era.
This decision is part of a larger trend of Musk’s leadership style at Twitter, which has been characterized by critics as having created a toxic workplace culture and evincing a lack of emotional intelligence.
Musk’s ultimatum to Twitter employees to commit to “long hours at high intensity” or leave the company is an earlier example of this leadership style. These ultimatums are not only unethical but also counterproductive. It should be no secret to Musk or anyone who leads a company acquired for over $40 billion dollars that overworking employees leads to burnout, decreased productivity and increased turnover rates.
Twitter’s brand equity is built on far more than unique features, such as the ability to send short messages and the use of hashtags. Twitter’s brand equity is the goodwill that the Twitter color, the Twitter bird, and the user experience built over the last decade and a half.
By even considering changing Twitter’s name, look, feel and the core things the social media platform means to its users, Musk is risking erasing the very things that make Twitter unique and valuable. This decision could lead to a loss of a significant percentage of users and a decline in revenue for the company.
Of course, none of this is illegal. As New York lawyer William Cooper mentioned, “Ultimately, with Twitter functioning as a private as opposed to public company, Elon Musk can do whatever he wants with the name, logo, and the brand itself.”
Whenever Musk sends out these late-night shockwaves that resonate from individual users to his creditors and the market itself, we need to keep in mind that none of this is new.
Musk’s most ardent critics argue that his leadership style at Twitter has already led to sweeping layoffs, mass executive departures and repeated business missteps. From a business model and strategy perspective, instability is not conducive to building a successful company in the long run.
Musk’s focus on engineering and disregard for other aspects of the business, such as brand curation and public policy, is also shortsighted. A successful company requires a balance of different skills and perspectives, not just a focus on engineering.
— AI Notkilleveryoneism Memes (@AISafetyMemes) July 24, 2023
Some brand lessons are learned quickly and eventually make for a strong brand that resonates more than ever with stakeholders. But other brand lessons are, as the above tweet captures, fatal to the years of goodwill a brand has built up.
Ultimately, as the weekend slid into Monday for Twitter — now officially “X” — it was riding the fail whale.
Welcome to X. Now this is how you do a rebranding: pic.twitter.com/yCiN4hywrx
— Fail Whale (@leederca) July 24, 2023
Only time will tell whether Musk’s pledges this weekend will be just another tempest in a digital teapot or whether, finally, people act with their feet rather than their mouths and leave Twitter for other social pastures.
But what is 100 percent certain is that when a major brand leaves the well-established marks of its brand yet continues in the same business, it’s extremely hard to find a case where it has gone even remotely well.
About Aron Solomon
A Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, Aron Solomon, JD, is the Chief Legal Analyst for Esquire Digital and the Editor-in-Chief for Today’s Esquire. He has taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania, and was elected to Fastcase 50, recognizing the top 50 legal innovators in the world. Aron has been featured in Forbes, CBS News, CNBC, USA Today, ESPN, TechCrunch, The Hill, BuzzFeed, Fortune, Venture Beat, The Independent, Fortune China, Yahoo!, ABA Journal, Law.com, The Boston Globe, YouTube, NewsBreak, and many other leading publications.
