Would you give money to your main competitor to advertise you?
That must have been asked by the people in charge of marketing at both Ford and General Motors, and in both cases it seems that the answer was the same: for now, better not.
After the purchase of the social network Twitter by the billionaire owner of Tesla Elon Musk for a sum of 44,000 million dollars, both Ford Motor Company and Genaral Motors decided to suspend their advertising campaigns on the social network. Both automakers now face the decision of whether to continue to be present on a platform that is being operated by one of their main competitors in what is an unprecedented scenario for the industry.
On the side of Fordits CEO Jim Farley is an active user of Twitter, however he has also recently expressed his desire for the company to make more extreme changes in the way it spends money on advertising and marketing. Your ultimate goal is focus on the post-purchase experience instead of traditional ads, a target that would apparently be better for customer retention and engagement.
While on the side of General Motorsstated the following: “We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under its new ownership. As is the normal course of business with a significant change to a media platform, we have temporarily stopped our paid advertising. Our customer support interactions on Twitter will continue.”
The truth is Elon Musk promised to modify the content moderation policies on the platformreaching the point where There was even talk of former President Donald Trump returning to the social networkafter his account was suspended for the constant spread of false news, racist comments and incitement to violence, which led to the bizarre takeover of the US Capitol. This type of policy put several companies on alert, which see a serious risk in the world’s most famous social network becoming a toxic and violent terrain.
Will Tik Tok be the place where companies will turn to advertise their products?