About Elon Musk and breaching the bro level.

By now, we are the kings of social media, ready to snipe hashtags and ride bandwagons,
perfecting timing throughout our holistic communication strategies. Nothing we are not
prepared for, everything meticulously listed in excel spreadsheets and evolving power
points. Social media can be so easy. We almost got it figured out, right?

But what is your communication plan, your rhetoric fidelity and your one-hit-wonder-esque
witty comment to shoot you into some currently trending social-responsibility discourse really
worth, when your CEO decides to sh*t all over it and get high on television?
I’m looking at you Elon, the ‘Edgelord’, Musk.

After a line of controversies, Musk is now officially considered a ‘bro’ by internet memelords,
as his smoke session with comedian Joe Rogan seems to be the next logical controversy
after announcing to set Tesla stock at 420$ back in August. However, his shareholders
apparently didn’t think as highly of this little smoke session in the Rogan podcast and made
Tesla drop by 10% the same day on Wall Street. 

The case of Musk is not only interesting for the LULZ, but certainly tells us a lot about the
current state of PR, and specifically about the implications of CEO communications as an
increasingly impactful subfield, that ultimately requires the same level of professionalisation
we have hopefully managed to establish in our daily doings. 
 

Can you feel the Bern yet?

After Edward Bernays pulled the first trick of public relations by relabeling and extending
propaganda techniques, we are currently seeing the PR evolve even further towards a
conception of ‘Public Engagement’. The fundamental changes to media landscape, media
logic and to how discourse works in our society have irrevocably changed the sphere of
corporate communications. In times of social CEOs and leaders, social media is seen as a way to
humanize, and thus personalize, formerly monolithic and faceless organizations (Tsai & Men, 2017). In fact, research finds that responsive and assertive communication by CEOs
leads their followers to perceive them as ‘amicable role models and caring friends’, which in
turn increases trust, advocacy and satisfaction - and ultimately munney!
Linking this with the changes of media logic it seems like a requirement for modern CEOs to
engage in positive and ethical manners with the public, as they are the walking public image
and reputation of their organization, as well as a commonly searched source for
content-starved journalists.

What we have seen in the case of Elon Musk is him breaching the line of an ‘amicable’ friend
into the ‘bro’-sphere, which caused backlash not only in immediate economic reactions, but
may cause even further reputational damages through concerns of Musk breaking the
ethical role-model expectations public figures (and especially CEOs) are subjected to.

In this sense, I believe, that we as professionals need to understand the importance of social
CEOs and be clear and strategic about the approach, seeing it as an integral part of a
strategic communication framework, rather than a personal side activity the CEO interferes
with at free will.
The lines between untrustful ‘bro’ and amicable friend are apparently very fine, and small
missteps might snowball in their effects.
Probably we need to take our CEOs in hand for a while, extend our communicationplan.xls
by another sheet (I know you love it somehow) and walk the long ways of the social
together, making more amicable friends for our CEOs.