Elon Musk travels to Miami later this month in an effort to mollify advertisers as he grapples with the reality of a traditional, difficult, media business.
He will face a tough crowd at the conference of MMA Global, a key digital marketing trade association. Earlier this week, Semafor obtained emails among some of America’s top marketing executives who are concerned about Musk attitudes on, in particular, race.
In one email, McDonald’s chief marketing and customer experience officer Tariq Hassan described Musk’s acquisition as “a situation post-acquisition that objectively can only be characterized as ranging from chaos to moments of irresponsibility.” He also said that “for many communities, his willingness to leverage success and personal financial resources to further an agenda under the guise of freedom of speech is perpetuating racism resulting [in] direct threats to their communities and a potential for brand safety compromise we should all be concerned about.”
He wasn’t alone: Colgate-Palmolive’s vice president and general manager of consumer experience and growth said in an email to the group that she was “both excited for the success of the conference while also mindful of the harmful and often racist rhetoric of Elon Musk.”
A Twitter executive, Chris Riedy, was on the leaked thread, and earnestly thanked the CMOs for their brutal feedback.
Riedy, who Musk put in charge of Twitter’s advertising in November, appeared to be speaking for Twitter despite having been widely reported to have been laid off in a round of cuts in February.
In fact, a senior marketing executive familiar with the situation said, Riedy was quickly un-fired, but lost his role running the company’s sales organization. Its senior members now report directly to Musk. (Riedy didn’t respond to an inquiry.)
Source: https://www.semafor.com/article/04/09/2023/elon-musks-ad-problems