After vicious social-media backlash, X CEO Linda Yaccarino’s interview at last week’s Code Conference has been branded a train wreck. The question now is how Yaccarino, Elon Musk and the X (formerly Twitter) brand will rebound from the debacle.
Several crisis communications experts told TheWrap Yacarino lost some credibility as a result, but the biggest takeaway was that she’s clearly not in charge at X.
“The way Yaccarino behaved onstage was a worst-case scenario because it undermined her as the CEO,” Kathleen Schmidt, who runs Kathleen Schmidt PR in New York, and has worked in crisis PR for 25 years, representing high-profile clients, including Woody Allen, Michael Cohen, Alan Dershowitz and Robert F. Kennedy Jr, told TheWrap.
“She’s supposed to be an authoritative figure about her company,” Schmidt continued, “and that did not happen.”
During the interview, CNBC’s Julia Boorstin asked Yaccarino about Musk’s potential decision to make all X subscribers pay to use the platform. Yaccarino responded, “Did he say we were moving to it specifically, or he’s thinking about it?” The response made the CEO appear as if she had no idea what her boss’ plans were for the site.
Schmidt says Yaccarino’s performance indicated that X needs a corporate communications team, as it was clear Yaccarino was unprepared for the interview. Musk laid off most of Twitter’s communications team soon after he took ownership and for months emails to the press account got a poop emoji as an automated response. That has shifted recently with the arrival in comms leadership of Joe Bennaroch, a former senior executive at NBCU. Bennaroch declined to comment for this article.
“She probably had a few things written down, things she wanted to say as far as their metrics are concerned — how many active users they have, how many brands are advertising and focusing on the positive aspects of the company, because there’s been so much negative press about it,” Schmidt said. But it was clear Yaccarino wasn’t prepared for questions that required more detailed answers, she added.
About an hour before Yaccarino’s appearance at Code, Code co-founder Kara Swisher interviewed Twitter’s former head of trust and security, Yoel Roth, whom Musk has publicly ridiculed. Despite Yaccarino appearing to be surprised by Roth’s appearance, Swisher said Yaccarino was fully aware that Roth would be interviewed. Yet, when asked to respond to Roth’s critical comments about X, Yaccarino became combative, saying, “I don’t know him. He worked at Twitter. I work at X.”
A corporate communications person could have sat Yaccarino down, Schmidt said, and prepared her for worst-case scenarios such as this one and spoken with Swisher ahead of time to get an idea of the scope of the questions.
Jeremy L. Knauff, the founder and CEO of Spartan Media in Tampa, Florida, said that “if a client is going to talk to the media, we have a conversation beforehand, we prep them on what might be asked — including the tough questions, including the questions that may make them uncomfortable or angry — so that when they are in that situation, they don’t end up coming off in a negative light, the way [Yaccarino] did.”
He added that anybody making a public statement for a company needs to be in the loop on the communications strategy.
“I don’t think it’s a communications team at X problem,” countered Kelcey Kintner, senior vice president at Red Banyan Crisis PR in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “I think it’s working for Elon Musk. They’re clearly not working in concert. She was completely rattled by that question about the paid subscription service and the follow-up questions.”
“The messaging [between Yaccarino and Musk] has to align, and that is not what’s happening here,” Schmidt said. “She sat on that stage, and she said they talk all the time. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that she knows what his next step is going to be.”
As a CEO, Schmidt said, “You cannot act defensive or condescending or inauthentic… because her MO is probably to do all she can to defend the company instead of laying out ways that they’re trying to improve things.”
Kintner said she was surprised at how unprepared Yaccarino was. “I thought that all the questions were very expected — questions about engagement and advertisers and users going down. That’s been the criticism at X for months.”
Prior to coming to X, Yaccarino spent more than 20 years at NBCUniversal in multiple leadership positions. Before leaving to work at X, she was responsible for the NBCU’s global advertising sales.
While Yaccarino could have benefited from additional training “to make sure she was able to handle these questions in a really professional, competent, impressive way,” Kintner said, with only 12 weeks in the job she hasn’t “figured out quite yet how to navigate her role as a committed soldier for Elon Musk and the facts themselves.”
Schmidt disagrees. “Twelve weeks is enough time as a CEO to really dig into the company and say, ‘OK, these are the things that need to be fixed.’ She has to reposition herself as an authoritative figure on the company she’s supposedly running, because what she did on that stage did the complete opposite.”
Kintner said Yaccarino could and should have found a way to address people’s concerns. “There was no acknowledgment of any of X’s challenges,” she said. “It’s not a weakness to say, ‘Yeah, we’re having some challenges with advertisers because they don’t quite understand what we’re doing yet. We are transforming this platform in ways that are innovative and incredible and are really going to meet the needs of our users. But I think it’s taken a little bit of time for advertisers to really understand what we’re doing.”
So, how will this interview affect Yaccarino going forward?
“Unfortunately, she came off as sort of inauthentic and not transparent, and just pushing out this endless spin,” said Kintner. “But you can bet she’ll be more buttoned-up the next time she faces those kinds of questions.” Kintner noted that Yaccarino went onstage and acted as a faithful foot soldier for Musk, so her job is likely safe.
“She did not project confidence in the things that she was saying,” Schmidt said. “In my mind, it caused her reputational damage. The audience there very much wanted to hear what they’re going to do to fix the platform. They did not want to hear that the platform is doing just fine. They wanted to hear what they’re going to do about brand safety, about the active users that they’re losing, about antisemitism on the platform.”
Businesses and individuals alike have been highly vocal in their criticism of Musk’s takeover and many large companies no longer advertise on X. Changes Musk has made include reinstating Donald Trump’s account and accounts of formerly banned white nationalists and anti LGBTQ figures, charging for blue check marks, ousting the original leaders, changing the company’s name, banning the moderation of false COVID-19 information and de-platforming journalists. Just last week, more than 150 Jewish leaders wrote an open letter calling out what they describe as Musk’s antisemitism on the platform — a concern they have expressed since he took over Twitter in October 2022.
“It’s a train wreck, and Yaccarino’s not running anything,” Schmidt said. “It’s Elon’s company. He’s running it. He’s running it poorly. She doesn’t have any say in that, and it’s only going to get worse.”
Knauff, however, doesn’t see significant fallout from the Boorstin interview. “Elon Musk is undertaking a long-term endeavor, so the [Yaccarino] interview isn’t a major crisis,” he said. “Musk is very committed to what he’s doing, and he seems to have the ability to tune out critics.”
Kintner concurs. “I don’t think Musk will spend two seconds focusing on this,” she said. “This is not even a blip on his radar, and I think Yaccarino’s a very experienced CEO, and she’s working for a guy that’s completely rogue and who loves to be a disruptor. And it’s hard to do PR for a disruptor.”
