• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, April 26, 2023

What can Elon Musk do to reverse his impact on Twitter?  Suffice to say, he’s had a very mixed effect on the company since acquiring it in October 2022.  On one side, he has likely cut many of the programs that were costing money with little to no positive return.  On the other side, he has alienated advertisers and confounded the market with his proclamations of “free speech,” while disabling some people from having an accurate representation of their voice with the back and forth on blue checks and more.

His recent “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach” announcement continues to confuse the audience even further.

At the Possible: Miami Marketing Conference last week, Musk took the stage and was interviewed about his plans for Twitter.  He was calm, not giving in to hyperbole and grandstanding even though there were a number of opportunities to do so.  The audience was mixed, with some people there to watch the possibility of a dumpster fire  -- while others were there to stroke his ego in a way I’ve never witnessed before at a media conference.

Musk’s objective there was a simple one: Court brands to come back to Twitter.  Was he successful?

I would say “no.” He missed an opportunity to speak to brands in a way that would resonate with them.  His goals of allowing free speech came off as allowing anyone to say anything at any time, with the knowledge that Twitter would not actively promote any statements that were hateful or factually inaccurate.

Too often the rhetoric published on Twitter, and through most social media platforms, is based on a “truth” and then warped for personal opinion.  In those situations, the determination of what can be promoted are difficult to manage, and that is an environment where brands are simply not comfortable.

Making matters even more confusing was the announcement that Musk was now making it possible for brands to buy ads based on keywords.  He said brands couldn’t do that in the past, and his practicality had brought the opportunity to bear.  Many of us who had advertised on Twitter before were perplexed because we’d been able to buy keywords on the platform for years.  In fact, it’s the only way I’ve ever bought advertising on Twitter, so the announcement came off as strangely ignorant.

I spoke to a couple of brands who had the experience of taking one-on-one meetings with Musk, and their response was similar: the meetings also confused them.

All in all, having Musk attend and speak at the conference was a massive draw, but it felt that both sides came away from the experience wanting more.  Brands wanted more agreement that Twitter would be a place where they felt comfortable.  The naysayers in the audience came away unsatisfied because there was nothing on fire after the meeting.  It was simply an opportunity that resulted in the status quo, with little movement from either side.

Musk is an interesting character who wants to run Twitter like his other businesses, but it doesn’t work like that.  In Tesla, Musk built a business that withstands his character because of the quality of the product.  Your car works, and the experience is amazing, and you are willing to overlook the politics of the CEO.

In Twitter, you have a business that functions on emotion, and in human psychology, emotion comes before logic.  Sometimes you can overcome the emotional hurdle to get to the logical situation.  Sometimes you can’t.  Twitter is a business that for all its logical components, has a massive emotional hurdle to overcome, and I don’t think Musk has the the emotional intelligence (EQ) to understand that.

People do change though, so you never know what can happen in the next 12 months!