How to decimate a brand in 300 days

There are solid professors and mentors all over the country who can walk you through the fundamentals of how to build a brand. For better or worse, most of 2023 (and some months of late 2022) delivered many of us a masterclass in how to dismantle – better said: ravage – a global brand that people, companies, politicians and governments came to depend on to make sure their voices were heard first and clearly on the public stage.

But before we jump into the "instructions" in how to destroy, let's start with what was built and how many of us remember the platform that was Twitter.

Legacy Twitter

Twitter was never the biggest social platform in the world. Rivals, like Facebook, dwarfed Twitter's 321 million active monthly users (more reliable data reported by the company well before it was bought in 2022). But you could never call Twitter irrelevant in the digital ecosystem:

• For its earliest users, it became a digital space to experiment with instant self-publishing without having to design and market a new blog;
• It was an environment where verified public figures interacted with typical users because celebrities felt there'd be little risk in their public persona being associated with the platform;
• Across mainstream and niche media, it was the place where news was broken, ahead of being posted to an official site – an essential tool for many journalists;
• Social movements caught fire (e.g., #MeToo, Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, etc.) and came to change entire cultural paradigms;
• However, Twitter had its fair share of problems; among them: unable to routinely achieve profitability and the platform was definitely a low-ROI tool for marcomm pros who tried to do anything organically (i.e., you couldn't really reach mass crowds without spending considerable ad dollars).

The Twitter brand was hugely significant – ask any tech reporter – in shaping modern perceptions of human connectivity and even politics. But a brand’s strength rests in the provable 'reasons to believe' in what it stands for among core users/customers and beyond. In Twitter’s case, in addition to the primary value proposition (come here and send a 280-character message to the world), what else can you reasonably expect to experience when interacting with us? An unexpected shout-out from your favorite celebrity athlete? A means of ensuring your senator’s legislative staff understands your dissatisfaction with the lawmaker’s position on an important bill? A digital environment where your company’s ad won’t appear next to hate speech?

Welp… 🤷🤷🤷...not so much anymore. How far the storied platform has fallen.

Teach me, teacher: How to decimate a brand in 300 days (maybe less)

So here's how to unwind the global influence of a brand that meant much to many.

Step 1: Change a brand name with iconic name ID on a whim to…a variation with no meaning (outside of the one person that just can't let it go – reportedly, X's owner has been obsessed with the moniker since he was a child, and Paypal's original name was x.com – it didn’t work then, and it's still nah). A name – let alone one that generated a globally recognized verb – is an asset to a brand and provides tons of intangible value. Doing away with Twitter’s name through such a non-strategic change that didn’t even offer a real rebrand strategy: just no.

Step 2: Messily fire a huge chunk of your employees while shamelessly violating the terms of their employment agreements. It's no secret Twitter had some fat to trim among the ~7,500 people it employed globally. But paltry severance offers exacerbated by refusal to pay out bonuses are not the move when mass terminations are handled in such a public, disgraceful manner. In the 12 months after Twitter was taken private, the company reduced headcount by 80%.

Step 3: Annihilate brand safety while encouraging an environment of disrespect. Monthly active users dropped 15% globally in the year after Twitter was taken private, according to stats from SimilarWeb. It's no coincidence this is happening in the midst of the 'trust and safety' team's unceremonious elimination, shattering the infrastructure that makes users, not to mention big brands and celebrities, feel comfortable that they won't be attacked and their public personas won't be associated with deplorable content. Guess while you're at it, won't hurt for your owner to alienate the advertisers that represent your company's primary revenue base. In an October 2022 tweet, Twitter's owner said he endeavored to make it “the most respected advertising platform in the world.” Every action taken since that time has generally run against that stated position. And the numbers show the effects: spending by large ad agencies plummeted by 54% in the 12 months following Twitter's ownership change, according to Guideline data. And several of the world's most recognizable brands explicitly halted their spends altogether, with many like Disney also suspending much of the organic activity on their owned accounts. (PS – aren't we all still waiting on that "content moderation council" that was going to reset how safety is better embraced across the platform 🙄?)

Step 4: Install loyal-to-a-fail leadership who lack the ability to drive decision-making or inspire meaningful contributions from staff. It's difficult not to pause in this moment to think about the incompetent showing by Twitter's current CEO to date. Her appearance at the Code 2023 conference can only be characterized as disappointing, and her awkward block-and-tackle defense of her boss' antics – even when he very apparently pulls the rug out from under her – is borderline pathetic. It's clear who's calling the strategic shots at Twitter currently, and it's not the in-name-only CEO. This reflects poorly on a brand when compared to the myriad others whose leadership structure allows for a visionary chief executive to outline an aspirational strategy and execute to achieve clear, bold goals.

Step 5: Remove the "markers" that make use of the product feel special. No need to recount the full Blue Check fiasco here, but suffice to say not a lot of smart people vetted that decision. And the after-effects are easy to see. Anyone, including nefarious actors, can pay a miniscule monthly charge to be verified, game the algorithm and, even as far as, impersonate others (ask the brand team at Eli Lilly what managing a crisis feels like, thanks to this policy shift at Twitter).

The irony in it all

Definitely our lengthiest newsletter edition yet, and we could go on. But, the missteps in year 1 of the new Twitter were just...really something to observe. Ultimately, all that transpired has been such a shame because before an egotistical billionaire tried to turn Twitter into an "everything app" that was also a digital town square, Twitter was a…digital town square.