Marketing research and effectiveness platform System1 has used its ‘Distinctive Asset Testing’ capability to (rather unsurprisingly) find that a vast majority of consumers prefer Twitter’s old logo and identity to its new ‘X’ branding.
By comparing and contrasting X to other top social media platforms, including Twitter in its former guise, System1 found that consumers feel more than twice as positive about Twitter’s former ‘Larry the Bird’ logo than its new X.
System1’s Distinctive Asset Testing evaluated how recognisable a brand is (fame), how quickly attributable it is (fluency) and how that brand makes people feel (feeling).
While both Twitter’s Larry the Bird and the new X were found to be as equally recognisable and attributable as both each other and other leading social networks (fame and fluency) – the X logo fell far behind the others in terms of how it made consumers feel, with only 12% feeling happiness towards it, in comparison to 26% for Larry the Bird.
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“Fluency and fame are hugely important components of effective brand building, but ultimately it is a brand’s ability to evoke positive emotional impact – and make consumers feel good – that drives engagement. With X moving away from Larry and the tweet phrase overnight, the platform faces an uphill battle in recapturing distinctiveness and emotional appeal.”
Further findings revealed that nearly half (47%) of consumers were neutral towards the X logo, but over a quarter (29%) felt contempt – the second highest neutrality and highest contempt levels for any network logo, this is in contrast to 43% of consumers feeling neutral and 19% feeling contempt towards Larry the Bird.
Crucially, the research also revealed that the word ‘tweet’ has the highest level of both fame and fluency amongst social media network phrases (such as ‘share’, ‘story’, ‘reel’ and ‘status’) and that by scrapping its previous identity, the platform is losing two of its most recognisable and appealing brand assets.
