A month before Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced NBCUniversal advertising manager Linda Yaccarino as his successor, she interviewed him on stage in Florida – and showed backbone.
At several points during the interview at “Twitter 2.0: From conversations to partnerships” conference In April, a less determined interviewer might have moved on to other topics, but Yaccarino continued to press Musk.
The audience was filled with marketing execs, many of whom had grown suspicious of advertising on Twitter following Musk’s $44 billion acquisition last year. Twitter’s main source of revenue has long been ads, but that plummeted after Musk — a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” — bought the company. Advertisers had canceled or reduced their campaigns because they feared their campaigns would appear to spread racism, conspiracies and other objectionable content.
“I have to push you a little,” Yaccarino told Musk, “because there are a lot of people in this room who are voting with their wallet.” Some of them, given the “challenge” of Musk’s controversial “points of view” (he regularly tweets on politics and economics) are still “holding back” and not promoting, she said, adding, “What are you telling them about this space?”
Musk responded that audiences should approach his tweets with caution, as it’s difficult to get the tone across with a tweet. “Something that’s sarcastic or joking or something like that can come across as serious, even though it’s not.” He blamed the media for discrediting his tweets because they competed with Twitter for advertising money .
She then asked if Musk should be held to a higher standard on his tweets, noting, “A lot of people think you might be too provocative.”
Musk replied, “I think I should be held to the same standard as everyone on Twitter.” He then attacked traditional journalists and stressed the importance of strengthening citizen journalism. He said it was “very important to hear the voice of the people … to let the people rule the narrative and let the people rule the truth, and not five editors-in-chief chief of major publications.”
Yaccarino replied, “Let me take you back to what people in this space care about, and that is protecting their advertising campaigns.” She said there must be a way for these people to “make an impact on what what you build”.
Musk replied, “If I said, yes, you can influence me, that would be wrong, that would be very wrong, because that would be a restriction on freedom of expression.”
Instead of continuing, Yaccarino further emphasized this point:
“I want to be specific about influence. For the advertising pros in this space, it’s more of an open feedback loop designed to help grow Twitter into a place where they’re happy to invest more money: product development, ad safety, content moderation. That’s the influence.”
Musk replied, “It’s totally cool to say that you want your ad to appear in certain places on Twitter and not in others.” But it’s not cool to say what Twitter will do. And if that means losing ad dollars, we lose them. But freedom of expression is paramount.”
Musk earned applause for that phrase, which may have prompted another interviewer to change the subject. But Yaccarino continued. She noted that old Twitter has a “very well-populated popular influence council … where they’ve had or would have access to you time and time again.” Under Musk, Twitter stopped getting together its Ad Influence Council, a quarterly meeting between Twitter and about three dozen top advertisers to discuss various business issues.
She described the advice as “actually a recurring feedback loop from your key stakeholders, your advertisers” and asked if he would commit on stage to reintroducing it.
Musk disagreed with the idea of an “influence council,” but agreed that “feedback would be appropriate,” adding, “If someone spends money on their advertising campaign, it has to get results for their organization or it doesn’t make sense.” “ ”
As the interviewer that day, Yaccarino kept in mind that he knew the audience: marketers wondering if they should advertise on Twitter. Nonetheless, she put on a strong performance and showed a willingness to keep pushing the Twitter owner – to whom she now has to answer.
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