I was recently asked for comment on Retail Gazette’s (on their new site Marketing Beat) take on Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and its impact on Marketers.
Read the piece here.
Or here were my full comments:
Elon Musk has not really shown his cards (yet) and suggested how he wants to drive the business forward, with that said I expect Twitter could become:
- Less Advertising Reliant: The move away from advertising will likely improve the product and seeing more brands and influential accounts use the platform as a potential subscription service could offer many unique opportunities for brands and agencies to build out subscriptions and safe offerings without having to build or buy an external platform or build community on Discord.
- More Decentralised: Decentralisation is something Elon Musk and the Product team could decide upon, we could see numerous Twitter clients and services built out, this means more monetisation, more innovation and abilities to offer Twitter as a build your own version of Twitter. If a niche Twitter is built this means much better targeting and richer data on offer for Marketing Departments to play with and target upon.
- Coin / Token Based: Twitter is placed well within the crypto and web3 communities and alongside Reddit and Discord. By being the home for emerging markets we could see more technology being implemented and become a place where brands may want to release their own ventures into coins and tokens and transact with this thriving and expanding community.
- Disruptive: Musk is known for solving complex issues, if Musk can revolutionise the car market and send rockets to space, Twitter should be something he and his team could reshape. This could mean improving the advertising product, it could mean offering pay to play for brands, and this could mean more interactive and rich media offerings. We should expect disruption and disruptive change, as Elon Musk has no fear of change or optimisation.
- Ghost Town: We could see many brands actively choose not to advertise on Twitter, it has been a platform many left or left to automation. Twitter for the foreseeable needs brands, but brands might not need Twitter, especially one where the potential new founder has dividing comments and opinions.
- Validated: Something many have forgotten is Twitter is a 15-year-old social media platform, it has had a struggle with anonymous and pseudonymous accounts. Working through this is going to be a long process to unweave, however, this could mean more verification and more trust across the platform enabling a safer place for brands to play in and trust the user base it has.
- “The Space For Free Speech”: Elon was vocal about free speech and being the platform for this. Although free speech makes sense, unfortunately on platforms like Twitter and the known troll and abuse problem, this could negatively impact the platform and become an even more toxic platform. For all of the first to third order thinking with Twitter, brand leaders should stay vigilant of the potential changes as this could become an unsafe space for many brands
- Creative Space: Twitter is uniquely placed in how it still influences media, culture and revolutions. It is a place you either stand out or stand up and you have to become creative to gain any engagement. Twitter should embrace external links and hosting longer content, it is a default social network for so many and a news hub, by embracing this they can win back Marketing teams and be impactful across the Marketing funnel.
We still have six months for the sale to go through or for Elon to drop out ($1b termination fee) but with all of the threats, there are some real opportunities if the sale were to go through.
Here are the seven business rules from Elon Musk.
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