At Orbit Communications, we understand brand refreshes. While there are risks and rewards, any change must enhance, protect and drive forward a business. So how is Mr Musk faring?
On Monday, Twitter announced it would change its iconic blue bird logo and name to the singular letter ‘X’ and adopt an entirely new aesthetic.
Twitter is one of the most popular social media sites on the internet, with over 400 million monthly users and in late October of last year, it was purchased by Tesla and SpaceX’s CEO and eccentric billionaire, Elon Musk. If this is an attempt to make his costly $44 billion purchase of Twitter fit nicely with his other projects, it may be successful, but it is hard to see how this rebrand can do anything but hurt Twitter’s iconic brand image.
Musk made the purchase after criticising its free speech policies following several prominent account suspensions. He has claimed that Twitter is the modern-day town hall, and so the topic of censorship on the site should be taken seriously.
During his tenure at Twitter, Musk has implemented new features such as the paid subscription service Twitter Blue, and changes to the verification process. Both have been met with mixed reception from users but for Musk to recoup some of his investment, it seems like an inevitable step.
By taking one of the most widely recognisable names and logos in tech and replacing it with the singular ‘X’, it is tricky to see the positive side to the move. Changes are not uncommon in a brand after a change in ownership; however, this is drastic, to put it lightly. This design change fits nicely alongside Musk’s other assets, such as Tesla with their Model ‘X’ car and his spaceship manufacturer, SpaceX. Along with this, it is likely that this is the first move of turning Twitter into an ‘everything platform’.
Twitter has been famous for using its blue ‘Larry the Bird’ logo since 2006. Since then, the logo has undergone various redesigns until it landed on the minimalist version of Larry that we all know and love in 2012. The design had been the same since until the drastic change announced on Monday.
It could also be argued that this change follows the various other simplifications of brand logos that we have seen recently, just a more dramatic example. We have seen this be the case with brands such as Firefox, Pringles, and most luxury fashion brands, though reception to these changes is often neutral at best.
Whilst simplifying a logo can make the brand appear more accessible to wider audiences, it comes at the cost of the logo losing what made it unique in the first place. X will now have to contend with many other similarly branded products in search results, like Microsoft’s ‘Xbox’ and various ‘adult’ websites that tend to use X-rated to describe their content.The change has attracted much news coverage regardless of the public’s opinion. If you believe ‘all exposure is good exposure’, you might view the rebrand as an overwhelming success.
At Orbit Communication, we are poised to help clients with PR, branding, marketing, and crisis comms, offering a wealth of design services to help companies improve their branding. This aims to ensure that they don’t become the new ‘X’ in the headlines. Elon, if you’re reading this, call us or maybe even tweet(?) us!