Billionaire Elon Musk is CEO of three major companies, Twitter, SpaceX, and Tesla, but is his behavior having a negative impact on business?
KNX In Depth’s Charles Feldman and Rob Archer spoke with David Triana, a public relations and marketing expert, with Delight Labs, about whether Elon Musk and his seemingly erratic public behavior are bad for his corporations.
Triana says Musk’s public face and behavior are “definitely a cause for concern.”
“For someone like Elon Musk, who wields so much influence, it could lead people to question whether or not they want Musk being that lead voice in not only space exploration but the automotive industry and running arguably the most influential social media app in the world,” Triana said.
When it comes to what Triana would do if he were advising Musk, the public relations expert shared that his first move would be to tell Musk to stop his public social media use.
“Stop getting in the public eye the way that you’ve been and really put a gag order of sorts on Elon Musk,” Triana said, adding that he would tell him to “focus on your businesses.”
With a reach like Musk’s, Triana says that his use of social media is too powerful and could have serious impacts on his companies and personal wealth.
“With 147 million followers on Twitter, that equates to 45% of the U.S. population. His net worth is at $250 billion,” Triana said. “There’s a lot of risk there, and I think, at the moment, he’s doing a lot more harm than good for himself.”
Triana says he would also tell Musk to go back to the basics. Focus on SpaceX and Tesla, and let someone else run Twitter.
He says that with his constant “spats” on the platform and Meta’s recent launch of its own version of Twitter, Threads, there is too much going on that could impact him in other ways.
“You just want him to lay low and kind of go back to basics,” Triana said.
While Triana acknowledged that the brash persona he is showing could help him become more popular with his following, he also says that it could put “all of his assets at risk.”
He says the double-edged sword could leave people saying, “This guy has done a lot of cool stuff in the past, but he is not serious at all anymore.”
“That could lead to his businesses taking a very big hit,” Musk said. “How much of a hit? That remains to be seen.”
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