Is Elon Nuts? – How To Flush Billions In Equity

There are a lot of opinions out there (and you know what they say about opinions, right?) about Elon Musk abruptly changing the name of Twitter – one of the most recognized brands in the world to X. Prince is rolling over in his grave based on how well that worked out for him. But the thing I’m not seeing much discussion around the negative impact – and value loss in brand equity.  Hang out with me for a half hour and let’s talk about the value of the brand and do some amateur psychoanalysis of the brilliant but impulsive billionaire we all know and love. Is this the end of Twitter the company or just the brand? Let’s break this down in numbers.  Some analysts are saying that, in an instant, Elon Musk wiped out billions in brand equity by swapping the ubiquitous bird out with…uh…an “X”.  Brands at that scale are worth billions by themselves as a separate category of equity (separate from revenues for example). Twitter is the 438th most valuable brand on the planet (BrandFinance) with a market cap of $41b sharply down from a 2021 high of just over $60b.  According to Brand Finance Media, Twitters brand value (a subset of total value) fell 32% to 3.9b in June – before the name change. Vanderbilt University estimates the Twitter brand is worth $15b – $20b – comparable to SnapChat. 32% of $15b is…a lot.  Just before this massive change, The NY Times claimed Twitter’s U.S. ad sales plunged 59%.  Of course, that’s pocket change for Elon, but what about other stakeholders? If I sat on the board, I’d be lining up the lawyers for this careless decision.  Even beyond the brand equity loss, this move might be the social media equivalent of Kodak saying “Digital photos? PFFFFT.” I really wonder if the company can recover from this blunder.  I like Elon’s focus on free speech and his expansive ideas of what he might build from the ashes – but why build from the ashes? Screw the ashes. You build on success you don’t decide, seemingly overnight after smoking a blunt to ditch one of the most valuable brands in the world for a unicode, stylized X that apparently can’t even be trademarked because  the character is literally part of a public domain font. (Fact check me on this one – I believe it’s public domain).