Elon Musk is no fool - there’s a reason he’s the world’s richest man

History is littered with rebranding disasters, but the richest man in the world is no fool – now is the time to strike before the competition catches on, writes Chris Blackhurst

Elon Musk is taking a colossal gamble, but then that has always been his style (Getty Images)

There are polite words for Elon Musk. Counterintuitive, genius, maverick… all fall into that category. And there are others, such as clown, bonkers and mad, and some that are plain offensive.

Consider this: you pay $44bn (£38bn) for a social media giant, one with a widely recognised name, that’s been in existence for 17 years. You then sack a load of the senior executives and lay off many more, before playing around with the parameters of the site, making it more restrictive for its most frequent users and costly for the most celebrated. Then, you change its identity completely.

All this, in the face of advertisers withholding their spending and the launch of a “killer” rival from your closest competitor. Just when you might suppose the sensible path would be to promote the established, existing logo... you scrap it. Wow, double wow, triple wow.