The Washington Post reports that a third of Twitter's top 100 advertisers haven't placed ads on Twitter in over two weeks. Among the companies that don't want their brand associated with Musk's trollish behavior are Jeep, Mars, Merck, Kellogg, Verizon, and Boston Beer.
From The Washington Post:
Matthew Quint, director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School, said that many companies are under "pressure, from a range of their stakeholders and consumers, around being connected with content that is viewed as inflammatory." The challenge for them and for Twitter, he said, is that Musk is becoming "a very strong brand himself, and a controversial brand."
"The more he is out in the front, the more advertisers may … just choose to say I'm still not ready to be heavily associated with a Musk platform at this point," Quint said.
In the past few days, Elon Musk has replatformed several famous hatemongers onto his far-right social network, including manosphere influencer Andrew Tate, Kanye West, Jordan Peterson, Donald Trump, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. This is unlikely to entice controversy-averse brands to reconsider their opinion of Twitter's toxicity.
