Linda Yaccarino: An advertising veteran enters the wild world of Musk’s Twitter

Like most things with Elon Musk, it started with a tweet.

“Excited to announce I have hired a new CEO for X/Twitter,” he wrote Thursday afternoon, setting off a whirlwind of speculation in media and tech circles about who the billionaire had chosen to lead the social media group.

The rumors centered around Linda Yaccarino, a esteemed advertising veteran who spent the past decade at Comcast’s NBCUniversal. A spokesperson said on Thursday that Yaccarino was unavailable due to “back-to-back rehearsals” for the group’s annual presentation to advertisers on Monday, the company’s biggest event of the year.

But Friday morning, Yaccarino he was officially exiting the company, effective immediately.

It was a suitably chaotic start for Musk’s replacement as Chirping CEO. Yaccarino will leave behind the old school corridors of Madison Avenue for a start-up that has been run rough by the tech entrepreneur since he acquired it for $44 billion last year.

Yaccarino, 60, is a towering figure in advertising and has deep relationships with marketers and advertising agencies, as well as ties to traditional global business fixtures such as the World Economic Forum, of which he is executive chairman.

Twitter investors are hoping Yaccarino can be a steady hand in mending Musk’s strained relationship with advertisers, the company’s main source of revenue. The appointment comes as Moss struggled to get the platform’s finances under control, carrying out a drastic restructuring and cost-cutting that critics say caused internal chaos and technical problems for users.

At his acquisition of Twitter in OctoberMusk, a self-declared “free speech absolutist,” initially attempted to woo marketers, promising the platform would not become a “hellscape” despite his plans to ease content moderation.

However, many major ad agencies and brands have chosen to suspend spending on the platform, hitting Twitter’s revenues by around 50% and prompting Musk to lash out and threaten to “name and shame” those involved. In some cases he has personally called the CEOs of some brands that have held back advertising to reprimand them.

“If she shows up and can basically tell Musk what needs to happen, and he really leaves her alone to do it, almost every [advertising] the money will come back, and then some,” said Brian Wieser, a former WPP executive and longtime media analyst. “This is a testament to how well-liked she is in the industry and how deep her relationships run.”

Publicity insiders say Yaccarino’s biggest obstacle to restoring Twitter business may be Musk himself, known for his unorthodox management style and reaching out to those who challenge him.

“The challenge he faces is Elon,” said David Jones, chief executive officer of The Brandtech Group and former chief executive officer of advertising firm Havas.

Yaccarino has risen through the ranks of major publicly traded television companies over the past three decades, managing a team of thousands as head of advertising for NBCUniversal, where he oversaw more than $10 billion in annual revenue. His presence will instill professionalism at Twitter, where Musk has cut staff by nearly 90 percent and set up the company’s email auto-reply for reporter requests for a poop emoji.

Yaccarino’s Twitter feed, dating back just three months, is a mix of photos from industry events, promos for Comcast’s Peacock streaming service, and stray fashion commentary. “Anna Wintour is my EVERYTHING!!!” she wrote on the night of the Met Gala.

Having grown up in a “very traditional Italian Catholic family,” she is known for hosting advertising executives at her Italian villa after the annual Cannes Lion conference in the south of France.

Proponents say she’s a consummate relationship builder who could help turn around the company’s ad business, which has long lagged behind its larger peers like Meta in terms of revenue, resources and sophistication.

“There’s no one who doesn’t welcome a meeting with Linda, no question,” said a veteran advertising executive, adding that she had been an “ardent supporter of cable and television advertising” but was “a little dismissive of the value of social media to build brands” in the past.

At NBCUniversal, Yaccarino helped lead the launch of Peacock, Comcast’s streaming service, and pushed the industry for change outdated practices. Musk said Yaccarino will “mainly focus on business operations” on Twitter.

While they seem to make an odd couple, Yaccarino and Musk appear to share political stances. “He doesn’t necessarily fit the profile of leftist executive types,” the veteran advertising executive said. “If you put it anywhere on the spectrum, it would be like a [Ronald] Reagan Republican. Another media executive said she is known to be a fan of former US President Donald Trump.

They also share a penchant for showmanship. Yaccarino, a fixture at glitzy industry events, said if he didn’t work in advertising, he would like to run for mayor of New York City.

When news of his hiring broke, Yaccarino’s ties to the WEF prompted a backlash from conspiratorial Musk fans, many of whom share a distrust of international political organizations.

Musk, who in January described the WEF as “increasingly an unelected world government,” addressed fears that Yaccarino’s connections would hurt his free speech agenda, writing: “The commitment to transparency of the ‘open source and acceptance of a broad range of viewpoints remains unchanged”.

Some executives questioned Yaccarino’s supreme power. A top industry executive said it was apparent Musk was still executive chairman and will call the shots. He clarified that he will continue to lead the product and engineering business, where he is most qualified. However, to date a flurry of product changes, such as the introduction of the new premium service Twitter Blue, has failed to win many users, and the platform has experienced an increase in outages since the acquisition.

Media analyst Wieser warned that leaving his established perch for Twitter was a “very high beta situation” for Yaccarino. “Either it shuts down or it goes spectacularly.”