[Industry Talk Time] Walmart Executives Defend Company’s Position To Stop Using X For Advertising
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Walmart executives made the headlines this week after announcing that the company will not use the X platform for its advertising campaigns in the future.
Walmart is the latest company to announce spending cuts for X advertising, since Elon Musk’s comments about a antisemetic conspiracy theory has caused other companies, such as Disney, to pull its advertising spending from X.
In response to allegations that Walmart is follwing suit with others such as Disney, the company’s executives have been brief, but firm, about why the company has decided to pull advertising from X. Here’s what they said:
“We aren’t advertising on X as we’ve found some other platforms better reach our customers.”
X’s head of operations Joe Benarroch also noted that Walmart hasn’t used X for advertising since October, but also illustrated how important they were to the platform’s online shopping experiences. Here’s what he said:
“Walmart has a wonderful community of more than a million people on X, and with a half a billion people on X, every year the platform experiences 15 billion impressions about the holidays alone with more than 50% of X users doing most or all of their shopping online.”
Elon Musk came out to fiercly defend his comments about the antisemetic conpiracy theory; he even accussed advertisers of using “blackmail” against him for his comments. You can read a full report about it here. I will focus on the key points from the interview at the DealBook Summit where Musk shared his views to the world, such as this:
“I hope they stop. Don’t advertise…If someone’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising — blackmail me with money — go f*** yourself!”
These comments were surprising, but the inteviewer, Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC, quickly shifts the narrative to how the economics of X will be affected by these companies decisions, such as this question: “would you keep the company [X] going a long time if there was no advertising?”
Here’s what Elon Musk said in response to this question:
“If the company fails because of an advertising boycott; it will fail because of an advertising boycott…and that’s what everyone on Earth will know.”
If anything, the harsh comments made by Musk about advertisers and companies could be a nice way to avoid being ostracized for his comments about the antisemetic conspiracy theory. On the other hand, I think there are some other valuable reasons for why companies such as Walmart are deciding to stop using X for advertising:
- Walmart wants to grow its presence in India market, and focus more of its global market strategy on diversifying imports away from China.
- Walmart is putting more of its effort and resources toward in-store employees in the US, such as giving employees a break for Thanksgiving and other incentives.
It’s also important to illustrate how the global market trends are affecting American companies in different ways. Just look at McDonald’s social marketing campagins and its deep push into the China market, which I wrote about in last week’s edition of [Industry Talk Time].
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