As Elon Musk continues to feud with companies such as Disney and Apple who have pulled their advertising from X, CEO Linda Yaccarino is left in a challenging position. Scott Powell, CEO of Skyline Corporate Communications Group, joined TheStreet to explore strategies for enticing these major advertisers back to the company.
Full Video Transcript Below:
J.D. DURKIN: Of course, we've talked about the flights from major advertisers. What does this tell you about the Herculean effort that some say that now CEO Linda Yaccarino herself a longtime ad executive, that she has to assuage the concerns from advertisers that either have left the platform or are looking at the erratic behavior of Elon Musk and saying maybe this just simply isn't a place where we want to store our ad dollars and we have all these other options in the marketplace.
SCOTT POWELL: It's to be honest, it's made her job really difficult. And this was an unintended consequence of his one sentence tweet on X a while back. And it's unfortunate because this is a perfect example of, okay, X is now a private company. He's bought it. He owns the majority of of X. But this is still an example of a private company and a negative impact being had on that because now the CEO she has a difficult job now of a trying to replenish those advertising dollars either by bringing in new partners or to bring back some of the corporate sponsors that left and try and convince them to come back to that platform.
I think the only real way to convince them is to explain what he actually meant from that post. I think he's made some comments and statements afterwards, but really in detail. What was he trying to say with that? It created a lot of controversy, obviously, because of what's happening, you know, globally. And then to restore investor confidence or advertising sponsors confidence, that really should be some kind of a statement that we're going to be hiring a PR agency or someone in-house that is going to be working with Mr. Musk to make sure that when he makes public comments, whether they're on TV or on social media, that these comments are well thought out, are well developed before these statements are being made.
Now, a lot of individuals call them like cult of personalities, if you will. Some of these some of these personalities are larger than life. And we all know some of the others that have been in the media over the years. It can be difficult for someone like that to understand and realize that he or she needs this assistance, needs this help. But I think if he were to take that step and make a statement that we are we are I'm going to be more filtered. I'm not going to stop saying what I believe in, but it's simply going to be delivered in a more professional manner. You know, swearing on stage at, you know, here in New York City is not, in my opinion, very professional. I never really understand the need for vulgarity at all. But, you know, just I think making those statements, coming up with a plan, messaging that to the public and and then trying to convince some of these advertisers to come back. But it certainly made her job very difficult.
