Xanax, Xyzal, Xarelto, Xeljanz. The pharmaceutical field has an almost Elon Musk-ian attraction to the letter X.
Of course, drugmakers opt for the letter X in their brand names for valid reasons.1 X sounds high-tech. It’s memorable. The letter, along with Y and Z, have become so familiar to consumers that they operate as a kind of shorthand for the drug category—like standardized colors that food brands use to cue shoppers in the grocery aisle.
But when Musk decided to rebrand Twitter to X, it didn’t endear his users. It alienated them.
It’s no secret Musk has an affinity for the letter.2 It’s the name of one of his children, after all. X is also the name of the holding company he established prior to his acquisition of Twitter. He was among the founders of X.com, an online bank, in 1999. And he’s spoken (or Tweeted or whatever X users do now) about X as an “everything” app that’s part social media platform, part payment system, part instant messenger.
The problem is that X is an empty vessel. It has no intrinsic meaning. In math and in language, X is a placeholder, something to be determined later. Brand X is a generic, hypothetical set of products. The X in X-factor is a quality we can’t quite pin down. To X something out is to erase it.
X Doesn’t Mark the Spot
Beyond the meaninglessness of it, Musk made a strategic branding miscalculation when he renamed Twitter as X: It was too late.
More than a decade ago, he could have owned X as a brand name. He created X, and then he walked away from it, and now he wants to come back to it. Of the 10 or so companies he currently owns, SpaceX was the only one to adopt the letter before the Twitter rebrand. He could have launched CarX or BrainX or TunnelX, all under the parent company X, and it would have been brilliant.
I understand the appeal of X. It’s more of a symbol than a letter; in fact, many alphabets don’t include X. It can be edgy and mysterious and intriguing. But at this point, X is culturally played out. Too many brands across too many categories have already made their mark with the letter X—TEDx, Xbox, X Games, and Xfinity to rattle off just a few. It no longer feels new or forward-looking.
In renaming brands, our guiding principle is: Do no harm. Renaming is risky work because it’s so subjective and people get so attached. The name Twitter had become emblematic of the very experience of using the platform. It coined a whole new vernacular: We tweeted and retweeted. Now what are we going to do—X or re-X a post?
X may have staying power in pharma, but is it right for Twitter? Not so much.
References:
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4188646.
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/technology/elon-musk-x.html.
