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Elon Musk is launching a charm offensive to win back advertisers to X as he struggles to quell a backlash over his erratic management style.
The billionaire is returning to the advertising festival in Cannes after missing last year as he seeks to reassure ad groups and major brands over the future of the social platform, agency bosses said.
Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive and a former NBCUniversal executive, has joined him at this week’s event in the south of France and is working her connections to drum up support for the ad-funded platform.
A person familiar with X’s thinking said it was seeking to turn the corner after a tough period in which major brands deserted the platform over a litany of controversies including loosening its moderation policies.
Ad bosses said that brands have been put off by the mercurial billionaire’s provocative use of his platform, including sharing conspiratorial, rightwing viewpoints.
“Advertisers still have concerns about X and there is the opportunity for him to put his case as to why they should come back on the platform,” said one agency boss.
“If you’re seen to advertise on the platform, you seem to endorse him. I think he suffers from that much more than other media platforms,” the person added.
X is battling for its financial health as it struggles with the advertising drought, in which brands including Disney, IBM and Apple have boycotted the platform, as well as internal turmoil.
Executives at the company have said that more than 60 per cent of brands that had paused advertising have resumed — albeit in small ways — in the past few months.
However, advertising chiefs said that they were keeping X off their “preferred” lists of channels to use with their brand clients. While not an outright ban, it means that brands are not being advised to use X in their marketing.
“There still exists a major fear about the way that that business is being run — when you’ve got choices, it makes them less attractive,” said one executive, adding that for every “two steps forward, then there’s one giant step back with something crazy. And nobody wants to deal with that.”
Another said that some brands were beginning to consider X again, but added that there were also those that would never return.
“There are some that have drawn a hard line,” he said. “We have some clients that I don’t think will ever go back because of some of the things that have passed between the leadership of both entities.”
According to people familiar with the matter, Joe Benarroch, Yaccarino’s top lieutenant, suddenly left X this month. The move was reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Musk is due to address the main conference in Cannes on Wednesday in a talk with WPP chief executive Mark Read.
X is expected to announce plans for longer-form video on the site, a shift away from the sorts of curated news feeds used by many, with a number of deals set to be struck with content providers.