Big Picture – DEI Advocate Linda Yaccarino as Twitter CEO
Twitter platform owner Elon Musk has confirmed the hiring of Linda Yaccarino as CEO of Twitter. Many reactions are happening, but CTH analysis generally likes to stay ahead of the reactions and more into the future of what each datapoint means. That said, here’s some context.
The general or more common logic, completely understandable, is to look at the hiring of Yaccarino as binary. Either Musk was previously lying about everything he believed in, or the revenue situation is at a critical mass. Otherwise, it really doesn’t make sense to bring in Linda Yaccarino.
Before going deeper, it is critical to know just how ideological Linda Yaccarino is. The former head of NBCUniversal is the apex voice in the system of promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) from an advertising perspective. I’m not talking about a little bit ideological, I mean the full dna-level, metastatic, this is the core essence of what makes Yaccarino believe she has purpose in life.
Changing social culture by leveraging commercial enterprise is Yaccarino’s life work.
Literally Linda Yaccarino believes that advertisers should determine the product being sold. This is not a spoof, exaggeration, hyperbole or a spin on her outlook. Yaccarino believes marketing and advertising executives should be able to control the physical content, the actual stuff, created by the publisher they pay to advertise their product.
A traditional example might be Ford Motor Company telling Motor Trend magazine what positions to place ads for competitors in the auto industry as a contingency for their ad spend. A modern example might be Disney telling Fox News what content may be discussed by Tucker Carlson. This is the origin of DEI ideology controlling platform content.
To understand how this mindset applies to Twitter and Elon Musk, watch a few minutes of this previous interview between Yaccarino and Musk at a convention of advertisers. This is an example of how the NBCUniversal executive thinks. WATCH (prompted):
You can see in the back and forth, how Musk tries to stick to his core principles about “free speech” while Yaccarino uses terms like “partnership”, “collaboration”, and “mutual benefits” to leverage her advertising team’s agenda.
It is important to understand the views expressed by Musk and Yaccarino are mutually exclusive. There is no free speech when the advertisers are permitted to determine the content of that speech. Musk tries to negotiate a nuance, but the core of the dynamic is in conflict.
Any good, stable and even-tempered corporate executive will tell you the marketing team is consistently the least valuable mindset at the corporate table.
Factually, most of the people who fail out of business schools fail down into the humanities dept. However, sometimes those emotionally driven ideologues simply move into the marketing and advertising fields within the business majors. The outcome of this truism is Alissa Heinersheid and her destruction of the Bud Light brand through marketing.
Linda Yaccarino is the apex voice in the system that has allowed advertisers to determine content. She would be the ideal candidate within an organization like Google, but she is oil in the water of Twitter. So, what gives?
Why would Elon Musk hire Linda Yaccarino as the CEO of Twitter? We return to the binary issue…. Either Musk really doesn’t believe in what he previously advocated, or Musk has hit a wall of acceptance and generating revenue is now more important than the platform itself? For the latter, essentially the economics of the thing is determining the outcome of the thing.
There is a third alternative; a less familiar dynamic that has surfaced in the past and does provide a reference. This is what I call the “ino” hiring process within large institutions and organizations; “ino” stands for In Name Only.
An executive is hired to represent the division/organization, in name only. They have no actual control, influence or power. They are simply figureheads installed to create the optics needed for the institution to continue operations.
The ino practice is also visible with ‘diversity hires’. A person is hired not to drive the mission of the organization, but to deflect opposition away from the achievement of the organizational mission. However, all ‘in name only’ (ino) hires always end up in the exact same conversation within the organization.
When the ino realizes they are essentially irrelevant to the function of the organization, that means their opinions and recommendations are never part of the organizational outcome, there is always a conversation with the following words: “then why did you hire me?” This conversation always happens, it is the one constant in an ever-changing business world.
So, there’s three basic dynamics:
Elon Musk was not as committed to ‘Free Speech’ as he originally defined it.
Priorities have changed and now Revenue is more vital than Free Speech.
Musk is still committed but needs to create the illusion of DEI acceptance.
In considering the last element, Mrs. Yaccarino does not present herself as an ino-person who will accept a position and then not deliver on the intent of her mission.
So, what does this tell us about the future of Twitter content?
I think we all know the answer….
WHY?
Because the now-restricted Twitter Account created THIS:
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