I have about 35 different feelings about Elon Musk. They range from positivity bordering on adoration (Starlink for Ukraine), through to neutral (The Boring Company), to disgust (animal experimentation for Neuralink).
And while that multiplicity of response often proves complex and contradictory, it does enable me to step back with dispassion as one-note windbags announce, via Twitter, that they intend to leave – probably leave, certainly consider leaving – the platform because of the new ‘Chief Twit’.
If you are going to leave Twitter, leave! Announcing you are thinking about it, on Twitter, makes you look ridiculous.
And leave for a proper reason. Leave because it has become shit and largely dominated by superficial posturing. Leave because ‘marketing Twitter’ has become the opposite of all it once was. An obtuse refraction of marketing reality in which people talk about people who talk about people who do marketing, usually with an image of a World War II fighter plane that was bombed in the wrong places because correlation is not causation, or something.
As for the worthy brands now lining up to withdraw their ad money from Twitter. Why? The company and its new owner haven’t done anything yet. Are you seriously telling me that you are comfortable sponsoring a global football tournament built from neo-slave labour, for a government that imprisons members of the LGBT community for the horrendous crime of making love to each other, but you are withdrawing from Twitter because of what the new owner “might” do in the future? On Twitter?
Elon Musk takes over Twitter amid a challenging market for digital advertising
Exiting Twitter because of Elon Musk makes no sense. He has zero ideological positions on anything. Taking a stand against him is like fighting the wind – pointless and likely to leave you looking foolish while he blows elsewhere. And his enigmatic, empty Muskiness is stamped all over the current chaos that surrounds the acquisition of Twitter.
Here is a guy famous for being anti-advertising, now encouraging companies to see the value of ads on Twitter. Here is a guy that railed against the over-valuation of Twitter, now paying that price and trying, with no hope of success, to find $44bn of value. A guy who claimed that the Twitter user base was one third fake, now striving to prove its authenticity against his original claims. The guy seen as the only person that could fix Twitter, now portrayed as the one that will kill it. The guy who believed Twitter was an essential tool for free speech, who now asks users to pay to use it.
Taking a stand against him is like fighting the wind – pointless and likely to leave you looking foolish while he blows elsewhere.
It’s all very confusing and no-one can accurately predict how this whole, fascinating whirlwind will eventually play out. But there is one area where more certainty is possible. Where we can accurately assess Musk, Twitter and the current maelstrom of activity surrounding both. That area is pricing.
If you want to see a masterclass in how not to do pricing, Twitter is your go-to case study. It’s such a hot, digital mess that good marketers can simply take a perfectly inverted approach to Twitter and probably plough the right course for their brands.
Remember the great Seinfeld episode ‘The Opposite’, where perennial loser George Costanza succeeds by doing the exact reverse of what he would normally do? Well, that’s my advice for marketers currently involved in pricing. Follow Twitter’s moves and do the exact opposite. Specifically, watch, learn and reverse all five of the following Twitter pricing mistakes.
1. Ignore research, go straight to tactics
The point about pricing is that it is one of the Ps. A tactical part of the marketing triptych that you approach once your research has been completed. Research is crucial, because it turns out running Van Westerndorp analyses, or conjoint, or simply getting a handle on who your consumer is and what they think of the value they get from your brand, really fucking helps when it comes to what price you want to set and how you want to set it.
Or you can just skip this step and jump straight in with around $20 a month for Twitter Blue and be done with it. Why $20? Why monthly? Why start with Twitter Blue? Why not?
