Twitter rebrands to X, and marketers are confused

Twitter has rebranded to X, scrapping its iconic blue bird logo.

Its website now features an “X” where the bird logo once was, and the official Twitter account now features a new X logo in its profile picture. “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Elon Musk tweeted over the weekend.

According to Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, the rebrand is part of a larger pivot for the app, “transforming the global town square.”

“X is the future state of unlimited interactivity—centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking—creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine,” she tweeted on Sunday.

Yaccarino “laid out the vision for X at a meeting with top marketers” on Sunday in Napa, California, according to the Financial Times. Still, some advertisers are not sold on the rebrand. “My first reaction was, ‘Is this a joke?’...Honestly, I think it’s idiotic,” Matt Egan, managing director of strategy at brand experience firm Siegel+Gale, said. “From a branding point of view and a marketing point of view, it just seems like a crazy idea.”

Egan described it as a “pretty bold move, and pretty irresponsible” considering the value of Twitter’s brand. “The one asset that it has is its brand,” he explained, adding that the company has only occasionally turned a profit since it was founded. “Apparently he wasn’t buying the brand, but a lot of the goodwill and a lot of the value in that company is tied up in its brand.”

The change comes roughly a week after Musk said Twitter’s ad revenue has dropped 50%, contributing to negative cash flow for the company. Many advertisers left the platform when Musk first bought it amid concerns about content moderation and brand safety.

But the rebrand could be an attempt at a fresh start, Mario Natarelli, managing partner at marketing agency MBLM, told us. “Most people as users feel kind of burned by this,” he said. “On the other side, though, I think Musk is playing for a bigger prize. He understands what he bought and what was left of it isn’t going to get him to where he wants to go.”

Musk hinted at X last year after his acquisition of Twitter, tweeting that the purchase was “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.” In April, Twitter Inc. changed its name to X Corp. He’s long been obsessed with the letter X—in 1999, Musk’s financial services company that merged with a competitor to become PayPal was called X.com (he also tried to get PayPal to rebrand to X.com or X-PayPal). Two of his companies also incorporate the letter: SpaceX and xAI.

Shray Joshi, founder and CEO at marketing agency Good Peeps, said the rebrand could be an attempt to counter the hype around Threads, Meta’s new Twitter competitor.

“Threads is now a thing, and so [Musk] just needed something to combat all the attention that’s going there. A fun rebrand is a good way to do that. Do I think that solves, like, the other problems that Twitter is going through from a monetization perspective? No,” he told us. “It’s just Elon doing his classic Elon thing where he’s doing an amazing job of grabbing attention and getting people to talk about his business.”