How long does a rebranding process take? Months? Weeks? Hours? Less? The time it takes to write a tweet?
The fast-paced world we live in is always looking for ways to surprise us. And these days the rebranding of instantaneity has arrived.
The highly recognized Twitter, responsible for one of the most important and relevant social messaging tools in recent years, has taken a turn in just a few days, completely changing its name and image.
Twitter was characterized by having, since 2016, as emblem a nice blue bird, which over the years evolved in its aesthetic appearance.
Since last Sunday, Elon Musk retired the bird to replace it with a simple letter X.
And Twitter, one of the best-known company names in the world became simply X.
The origin of this is motivated by the fact that Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, has several companies with the X as a name. He founded X.com in 1997, which eventually morphed into Paypal. His space startup SpaceX has an X as its logo. And he recently founded an AI company called X.ai.
But the management of the new X now tell us that their intention behind this change is that X will be a super app that will go beyond Twitter and integrate, for example, mobile payments.
In the world of social networks, where everything is so instantaneous and immediate, the rebranding of Twitter to X has generated endless criticism, memes, analyses and assessments.
And comparisons with existing identities, from the X of X Men, to the X of Excel, the X of the original Xerox logo to the X of Xbox.
Opinions have not been long in coming and all kinds of comments can be read:
“I don’t like it at all, it looks grim”.
“Horrible and useless”
“Fatal. Swap a beautiful bird for a black X”
“Corporate Harakiri”
“The Twitter brand is part of internet history. This is sacrilege”
“The very nothingness.”
When asked by a user what tweets should be called now, Musk said, “x’s.” When asked what retweets should be called, he replied, “That whole concept should be rethought.”
Why liquidate such a globally recognizable icon? What about all the equity achieved – is there something we’re missing? Should we trust Elon Musk’s intelligence and knowledge of the market? Despite the criticism, memes and bewilderment, the X-era has begun.
At TOTEM Branding, we appreciate good branding and we are surprised by the way in which such a popular, endearing and recognized social network can change its image in such a way and with such a great repercussion that is generating so much controversy.
