Will the lesson of Coca Cola repeat with Twitter when Elon Musk deliberately changes the brand that is so familiar to the American people?

Recently, the fact that owner Elon Musk wants to change Twitter’s name to “X”, intending to turn this platform into a super application including functions such as online shopping or online payment, has become the focus of attention. opinion of the Western media.

Currently, the X.com domain name is directly connected to the Twitter page and Elon Musk said the official design of the “X” logo will be announced on July 30 but did not reveal further details.

However, Business Insider (BI) commented that this is not the first time the founder of Tesla has shown his passion for the letter “X”.

Passion for a quarter of a century

The Telegraph said Elon Musk’s passion for the letter “X” has existed for a quarter of a century. Back in 1999, 27-year-old Elon Musk founded X.com, a company specializing in financial technology and payments.

According to Ms. Julie Anderson Ankenbrandt, a colleague present at the meeting outside the cafe at the time Elon Musk was looking for ideas for the company name at that time, the name “X.com” came from a waitress and the founder. Tesla liked the name despite the doubts of everyone around him.

“Elon Musk slammed his hand on the table and exclaimed: ‘This is it’ when he heard about this idea,” Ms. Ankenbrandt recalled.

After X.com merged with Paypal, almost everyone agreed that the new name Paypal sounded more reasonable and the founder of Tesla had to accept the name change. However, in 2017, Elon Musk decided to buy back the rights to use this domain name to use for a new purpose, which everyone now understands is Twitter.

Then in 2002, Elon Musk continued to start a business with SpaceX, thereby showing his passion for this letter.

“The X in SpaceX at least means exploration to everyone. But Twitter changing to X doesn’t make much sense,” said author Eric Berger of the book “A history of SpaceX”.

More thrillingly, earlier in 2020, Elon Musk named his son with the same singer Grimes as X Æ A-12. Although Grimes’ mother said that “X” represents the unknown, everyone understands that this name is thanks to the passion of father Elon Musk.

Because the name above violates California state law, the Musk family eventually had to change their child’s name to X Æ A-Xii Musk.

Even with Tesla, Elon Musk’s Model X product line also comes from this billionaire’s passion for letters. However, whether this passion will bring success in Twitter’s rebranding campaign is still controversial.

Lessons from Coca Cola

On April 23, 1985, Coca Cola launched New Coke with a new flavor. Tests with 200,000 people in North America showed that people liked this new flavor more than Pepsi or even traditional old Coke.

So instead of selling New Coke with the old flavor side by side, the company decided to stop selling traditional Coke completely and switch to the new flavor. A $10 million flavor renaming marketing campaign was launched and all Coca-Cola executives thought this would be a huge success.

However, thousands of calls to Coca every day complaining about this decision took place when consumers became too familiar with the old flavor. Sales plummeted and stocks plummeted, while rival Pepsi’s stock rose, forcing Coca to eventually withdraw New Coke from the market and replace it all with the old, traditional flavor.

Obviously, changing the brand positioning, flavor or product that is deeply imprinted in the customer’s mind is a quite risky step.

Returning to Elon Musk, this billionaire plans to turn Twitter into a corporation called X Group, becoming a super application that includes many services, from finance to deposit savings like what WeChat used to be. work in China.

However, former Twitter vice president Bruce Daisley said that not everyone is convinced by this ideal.

“If you think that Elon Musk has everything planned, you are very wrong. He had no plan at all because Twitter was not prepared for this change. It was just a whim. From beginning to end, Elon Musk just wanted to destroy the evidence and achievements of others at Twitter before he arrived because that would remind everyone that future success, if any, is largely thanks to others. other than him,” Mr. Daisley commented.

Also according to Daisley, changing Twitter’s name is a disastrous step because the phrase “Tweeting” (posting on Twitter) has become a familiar term for Americans and no one will say the same thing with the new name X. .

The Telegraph commented that Elon Musk’s move is similar to when Facebook changed its parent company’s name to Meta or Google changed to Alphabet. However, while the two above corporations have a clear path, Twitter is quite unclear about its specific development strategy.

With Meta, Mark Zuckerberg clearly defined the path to developing his virtual universe, although currently not as successful as expected. Meanwhile, Alphabet clearly expressed its desire to use language to enhance Google’s search efficiency.

As for Elon Musk, no matter what this founder explains, the letter “X” that this billionaire has been passionate about for a quarter of a century does not evoke anything beyond the table to consumers and customers. 24 key.

“No matter how criticized, Elon Musk is a person with vision and ambition. I agree with him that Twitter has more potential than what this social network is showing. However, changing a brand is extremely risky and complicated, as has been proven in economic history. A huge part of a brand’s value comes from customers’ familiarity with that image and change can be counterproductive,” commented Vice President Rory Sutherland of the famous advertising agency Ogilvy.