What are you calling that famous microblogging platform owned by Elon Musk? Technically, we’re supposed to be calling it X now, but I am guessing most of us are still referring to it as Twitter.
Rebranding a business is not a decision to be taken lightly and it isn’t something that can be done with half-assed commitment. After all, the second you decide to change your identity, you are giving up equity built with your audience. It better be worth it and you better not make a mistake.
Sports radio (radio in general, really) is no stranger to rebranding. Struggling music stations drop rock, urban, or classic hits for sports talk. Sports talkers that don’t meet rating and revenue projections go away in favor of something cheaper. Those are the big changes.
There are also the smaller, but no less important, ones. “ESPN [insert city]” becomes “The Fan”. A station starts adding more gambling-focused content and changes its positioning statement to include betting terminology.
Any shift, big or small, is a change for the audience. As the brand, it is up to you to do all you can to get them to embrace that new position. I’m not sure if Elon Musk and his team are doing that. I mean, the name of the platform is supposedly X, but I still have to go to twitter.com to get to it. Why would I not call it Twitter?
Given our business’s relationship with a good ol’ fashioned “strategic pivot,” I thought programmers may be able to offer some insight and analysis of what they have seen so far. Maybe no one can understand why this rebrand is a necessity for Twitter, but if anyone can spot problems and share experiences that are valuable at this moment, it is these guys.
“I’ll never be as rich, smart or have the ego Elon Musk, but the X move sure looks and feels like an ego and emotional reaction to Threads,” said David Wood, who oversees 107.5 The Fan as Urban One’s operations manager in Indianapolis. “If nothing else, it is a poor launch. As you said, you still have to go to Twitter to access X. Do a Google search on X and you won’t find a reference to ‘the brand formally known as Twitter’ on the first page except for a couple of news stories about the switch. What you will see is all the other brands named X. To my knowledge there is only one Twitter.”
What are your motivations for rebranding? That is the most common question I heard when I asked these guys how you weigh whether or not it is worth shaking things up. Has something happened that necessitates a change or is there a goal that cannot be accomplished without taking drastic steps?
“A rebrand really only makes sense if the ‘old’ brand is out of date, is consistently underperforming or you want to take your venture in an entirely new direction,” Jeff Rickard, program director of Charlotte’s WFNZ, said. “Whatever you do, it has to match what you’re truly offering, sell the property and identify you as a truly unique option. You can wash it, shine it and put a ribbon on it, but your product has to match the energy and ‘storefront’ or you’re just spinning your wheels.”
Was the Twitter name out of date? Maybe a better question is had its brand become toxic. I think that is a question worth considering. It’s a simple question with a complicated answer.
Pre-Elon, Twitter’s toxicity largely depended on where you stood politically. Since the 2016 election, every social media platform has been wrapped up in a veneer of politics and since 2021, Twitter has drawn the particular ire of conservatives for banning former President Trump and others tied to the spread of misinformation. However you felt about Twitter, your feelings about that are likely shaded by your beliefs.
As a mechanism, Twitter worked just fine. The app gave you real time commentary and conversation about whatever was happening in the world. Every micro-culture had its own corner. Did you want to talk basketball? NBA Twitter was always buzzing. Did you need to know what is happening in Washington? Political Twitter was thriving. Did you have complaints to share about who didn’t get a rose this week? #BachelorNation could assemble at a moment’s notice.
The functionality of Twitter largely was not toxic until Elon Musk took over and decided to “just be doing shit,” to borrow a phrase from the platform.
Usage caps, eliminating safety protocols, paid verification, all of this is what had made Twitter less fun to use. If you change the name, none of that goes away.
So, why bother changing the name? Musk has said it is necessary to transition from Twitter, the news app, to X, the “everything app.”
“If the idea is for Twitter to do other things, I think it would have made more sense to create Twitter brand extensions rather than blowing up a unique and universally known brand,” Wood says.
He has been programming a variety of stations for a long time, and Wood says there is actually a lesson from his career he would impart on Musk. Phased transition, not sudden change, is the way to get people on board with rebranding a product whose problems are not obvious to someone without industry or institutional knowledge.
“In radio I think back to the 90s and a lot of AC stations changed to the Mix brand,” he said. “I know there was a line of thinking that they were all lemmings, and some were. However, when I was programming WRAL/Raleigh we had very old imaging and didn’t have a great image for variety. Research shows the Mix equates to variety for a large group of people. So, we became Mix 101.5 WRAL and later just Mix 101.5. It took time and marketing, but eventually the brand reinforced the image we needed. The station, like many others is still Mix to this day.”
As previously mentioned, if you want to access the platform know called X, you have to go to twitter.com. If you use an iPhone or iPad, the app you open is still the Twitter app with the old bird logo. New CEO Linda Yaccarino can insist the platform is called X and Musk can declare posts on site are now calls Xs and not tweets all they want. There is still plenty of evidence around that I am not wrong to keep calling this thing Twitter.
Rickard and his team at WFNZ recently went through a rebrand of their own. It wasn’t a full overhaul. The station has some serious heritage in Charlotte that no one would want to abandon. But for years, listeners knew to find the station on 610 AM, then it became a simulcast on 610 AM and 92.7 FM. Last year, the station abandoned the AM band entirely.
To make sure listeners were aware, it took a lot of imaging and promotion. More importantly, Rickard says, it took attention to detail and care to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks.
“There was a slight revision to the logo and a fresh new look on the web-site, cars, exterior images, etc. But the idea was to keep all of the great station history and present it in a 2023 version,” he told me. “The biggest problem you run into is discovering all of the little things around you (including station clothing) that is no longer relevant and you’re always catching the ‘old’ logo or signal on little things here or there. I always believe that once you rebrand – you have to get rid of everything everywhere with the old brand (old sales decks, letterhead, shirts, keychains, coozies, footballs, bandanas, mic flags). If you’re going in a new direction, you have to go all in. Above all, you just push that logo, that branding slogan and your mission as often as possible in as many ways as possible.”
Ever since Musk took over Twitter, we have seen the problems he has with impulse control and with just understanding how human beings work in general. Hell, there are a lot of us that believe he pulled a number out of his ass and bought the company just so his own Tweets would be seen by more people.
Rebranding Twitter to X in itself, does not make sense, but it is not entirely idiotic. The sudden announcement followed by the error-filled slow roll though has been jaw-dropping. It is more evidence that my belief about Elon Musk is right – while his money and power force you to take him seriously, he is not a serious person. He wouldn’t even be able to hold down a job as a promotions assistant.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
