Twitter is rebranding as X. And it seems like a good topic to bring up in class this week, so we can discuss the pros and cons. Why would you rebrand?
The brand name of an offering does two things 1) it's the unique identifier of an offering and 2) it's the vessel for all our associations with that offering. A brand has power when it is well known (high mental availability) and has strong positive associations. The associations can be simple likability, status, expertise, trustworthiness, efficacy, etc. The availability and associations then drive consumer choice.
Choosing to pick a new brand for an existing offering is usually done because we are unhappy with some of the associations our customers have with our current brand. So we drop "Donuts" off "Dunkin Donuts" to better reflect our offering. Or we rebrand to "Accenture" from Anderson Consulting both for legal reasons and because we think it reflects a more modern offering. Sometimes we move a little - PriceWaterhouseCooper to PWC, and sometimes we move a lot - Facebook to Meta, Google to Alphabet.
We can look at the Twitter rebrand as X from that lens. Twitter has had issues and the name has negative baggage so perhaps this is meant to be a fresh start. What are the cons? New brands are an empty vessel, they don't have awareness or associations and thus need to be filled. That's expensive and take time to fill an empty cup. The Twitter brand was not all bad and had even taken on additional nomenclature with things like "Tweets."
But here's the biggest issue for me. The brand isn't the problem. The offering and the management of the offering seems to be the problem. If the product was fixed and we still had lagging image issues tied to the brand, maybe change brands. But changing brand names without fixing the underlying issue isn't a solve. Finally, one of the issues of the Facebook to Meta rebrand happened again here. Part of the negative baggage (for some people) in both cases was heavily tied to the face of the brand - Zuckerberg or Musk. And in both cases, Zuckerberg and Musk made themselves prominent parts of the new brand. Basically starting to fill the new cup with their personal brand.
Maybe, this is a strategic decision because the offering is going to grow new capabilities (rumors of an all-in-one app like we see in Asia) and the current associations of Twitter as a messaging platform are too limited. OK, I can maybe see that.
We'll see... you choose a brand for your offering based on it's ability to drive the most value for the offering. When you choose a new brand you have to fill the cup. And the associations people have will be driven by everything they encounter with your brand. Not just advertising. Without fixing underlying issues, you just have a less known brand and a still broken product and therefore will be building negative associations. Seems like a miss.