Rant Time: Twitter’s Rebrand Suicide
In an odd move, Elon Musk has now officially thrown out the baby with the bathwater in Twitter’s rebrand to ‘X’. Yes, Elon Musk has officially rebranded Twitter to the single letter ‘X’. This will be short and sweet. Let’s explore.
X as a brand
Let’s jump right into this extremely questionable change. Twitter, as its former brand, had built extremely strong brand loyalty. From the cute and very much G-rated iconic blue bird to the light featured microblogging interface of the platform itself. Arguably, that small blue bird told you everything you needed to know about Twitter at first glance. There was no brand confusion between Twitter, the Twitter bird icon and any other platform or industry. Twitter was (and is) an entirely unique brand. Twitter even went so far as to define a new word in our vernacular as ‘tweet’ to signify the small microblog conversations on the platforms. Twitter was (and perhaps still is) about as strong a brand identifier as anyone could ever hope to produce for a product… and now it’s being totally thrown away.
On the other hand, ‘X’ has too many other uses and connotations in both the technology industry and in other industries, such as within Motion Pictures. Yeah…
I mean, why would you abscond with a single letter as a brand; a letter that, within the porn motion picture industry signifies adult content? X is also used by operating system designers for X11 or simply X for short, the graphical user interface server. Even Mac OS X’s branding could be conflated… and that’s perhaps what Elon is hoping. Between X-rated movie content and X utilized in the operating systems including with Mac OS X, the branding of ‘X’ is ripe for confusion and conflation. It’s even the middle letter in the word toXic, which Twitter has fully become since Musk’s takeover.
X also signifies crossing letters, words or phrases out and it sometimes even means ‘deletion’. Twitter was always about creating new content, never about deleting it or marking it out. It’s an odd play to buy a domain and rebrand when ‘X’, in terms of writing prose, has always signified deletion, hiding or marking something out. Again, this is a completely negative general connotation when applied to writing prose.
In other words, X is probably the worst brand identifier anyone could possibly choose for any site, least of all for Twitter!!??
Flipping the Bird
Elon Musk seems intent on flipping the bird at all things Dorsey. In that vein, Musk has questionably decided to rebrand Twitter to something other than Twitter. Um… Okay. However, rebranding is not necessarily a smart idea, but so be it. It even seems that Elon has thrown away yet more money to obtain the one letter domain x.com to support the rebranding (which this domain purchase probably cost him no less than $50k, but probably closer to $1 million or more), which at this moment redirects to Twitter.com.
(Note: Not linkifying any of Twitter’s domains in this article is entirely intentional. If you wish to visit any of the domains stated, you will need to type the domains into your browser manually.)
Clearly, Elon seems intent on replacing twitter.com with x.com at some point in the future. There are probably too many technologies within Twitter’s own internal software stack which reference the twitter.com domain name to change to x.com instantly. Redirection is the easiest (and laziest) first step.
Branding Difficulties?
The problem with this ‘X’ branding is not only its bad connotations around the porn industry, the colors chosen also embolden a very dark look. Dark grey and black brandings don’t say light and cheery. X’s color choices and even the letter itself say “dark and sinister.” Because X looms large with already existing, huge negative connotations, attempting to apply that to a site which is intended to offer a small, light microblogging interface that’s intended to be both fun and informational only serves to change the meaning and tone of this site in the negative.
Twitter has already embodied negative connotations ever since Musk took over. With his questionable foray into allowing the MAGA extremists back onto the site, allowing those bad actors to spew both conspiratorial and provably false rhetoric, Twitter is no longer a safe space. Twitter’s once light, safe environment disappeared the instant Musk took over, now solidified by this ‘X’ branding change.
Since Musk, Twitter has become an unsafe haven for negative, false and useless information. It is also a new toXic cesspool of hate and violence speech. If that’s what Musk was going for with the X branding, then well done. You’ve succeeded in turning Twitter into a toXic cesspool of false rhetoric, hate and violence.
Death Knell
With this rebranding to X, the only thing I expect to see is the final remaining advertisers to abandon what’s left of Musk’s quickly sinking website. Why would you, as an advertiser, want to associate your advertising brand with a brand identity that appears to be associated with negative adult content? Yeah. Not smart, but then we already knew that Elon Musk’s intelligence was limited to salesmanship, not in operating technology sites.
With this extremely questionable rebranding, I fully expect Twitter to wind down operations within 6-9 months… closing its doors soon after. There’s honestly no way to bring a modicum of safety or even the idea of safety to a site branded as ‘X’.
X doesn’t say, “safe.” On the contrary, this new branding says, toXic, adult porn content. If Musk wanted an intense uphill battle to try and change this letter’s already mired past uses, changing to X is the perfect way to get that challenge; a challenge I don’t think Musk is smart enough to win. Here you had a perfect branding with Twitter and the blue bird. Then, the current owner abandons it over a single letter that appears dark and sinister and which is mired in both adult content connotations and other technology uses. Nope, Musk is not very smart at all!
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How not to run a business (Part 7.1): Learn by Example
The above is a real customer call between Ryan Block and a Comcast customer retention representative. Keep in mind that Ryan Block’s significant other had previously been on the phone for 10 minutes prior to this conversation, who then got frustrated and handed Ryan the phone. In Ryan’s quest to cancel service, the 8m 14s conversation that ensues is an amazing listen.
To Comcast’s credit, they have issued an apology to Ryan. However, the above may indicate a newly emerging industry trend that may need to be identified within your own organization. Heavy handed tactics only lead to bad customer PR and, again, the above is a prime example of ‘What Not To Do’.
In the spirit of this series of articles, this call is also a prime example of how not to run customer service within your business. Let’s explore.
Do not allow your telephone representatives to run amok
Record all your customer facing calls and review these calls daily, preferably with the representatives in question. After listening to a call of this nature, the supervisor should have pulled this representative aside and called out this insane performance. This representative should have been immediately pulled from the phones and sent back to remedial training on how to work with customers. If this behavior continues, further disciplinary action should be taken.
What’s not completely clear is how much of this agent’s behavior and line of questioning was of his own volition and how much was a managerial and/or company mandate within his local organization or Comcast as a whole. It’s clear that Ryan seems to think this behavior is not by this agent’s own accord. He believes it to be wider problem within Comcast and this ARS technica article shows that this may be true.
Do not teach or reward your representatives’ bad behaviors
No matter where this type of behavior spawned, it is not welcome in any organization. If a customer calls to request service closure, it’s fine to ask a few questions to understand the nature of the request. However, if the customer declines to answer reason type questions, simply make a note of that in your records. Then, promptly accept and follow through with the request. Representatives are not there to argue, banter, delay or in any way hold the customer hostage by not following through with the service closure request.
If your representatives refuse to follow through with the request for closure, this is tantamount to extortion. Refusing to stop service may also be illegal and may also be considered in breach of your contract. If the customer has followed all contractual obligations to you for notifications and payments and your representative will simply not stop service, you should also expect a call from a lawyer.
Do not expect your customer retention team to act like this representative
This call underlines a lot of things all at once. Once thing it clearly underlines is this conversation method is not the path to customer retention or customer satisfaction. Customer retention is about offering a deal or set of deals to keep the person as a customer. Customer satisfaction is earned supporting requests, if possible, timely. When the customer declines all offered deals, there is nothing else with which you can barter. Your retention team’s job is done. At that point, the service closure should proceed unhindered per the customer’s request.
In a memo that was leaked via The Consumerist, Comcast Chief Operating Officer Dave Watson writes:
“[I]t was painful to listen to this call, and I am not surprised that we have been criticized for it. Respecting our customers is fundamental, and we fell short in this instance. I know these Retention calls are tough, and I have tremendous admiration for our Retention professionals, who make it easy for customers to choose to stay with Comcast.”
Though he also admits:
“The agent on this call did a lot of what we trained him and paid him — and thousands of other Retention agents — to do.”
Of this behavior, ARS Technica writes:
“Comcast employees have financial incentives to act the way the agent on the call did. An anonymous reddit user who claimed to be a Comcast employee wrote that “these guys fight tooth and nail to keep every customer because if they don’t meet their numbers they don’t get paid.”
Bottom line, do not pay your representatives to act in this way.
Do not allow your representatives to bring bad PR to your company
Another thing this call underlines is just how badly a call like this can backfire on your organization. With call recording technologies, internet sharing sites and viral media, your organization can now suffer a swift backlash. If you’re trying to keep your brand relevant, popular and selling, such bad public relations can easily bring your brand down and, along with it, bad press and legal ramifications.
Do not underestimate the power of social media
Social media is the new billboard and can make or break the reputation of your business. It only takes a one or two viral backlash campaigns and your company’s reputation is tarnished for at least a year. It will take that amount of time to rebuild your company’s brand, quality and reputation. In other words, don’t expect to get any J.D. Power awards after such a negative media event. Just as one bad email campaign to the wrong set of email addresses can tarnish your marketing reputation, one bad customer service experience posted to social media can tarnish your customer service reputation and with it, your brand, products and services.
Social media is a great white shark and those teeth hurt a lot when they bite you unexpectedly.
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