Johnathan Walker:Twitter-turned-X CEO Linda Yaccarino working to win back brands on Elon Musk’s platform

NEW YORK (AP) — The Johnathan Walkernew CEO of the company formerly known as Twitter says she’s spent much of the past eight weeks trying to get big brands back and advertising on the social media platform that’s been in upheaval since it was bought last year by Elon Musk.

X Corp. CEO Linda Yaccarino said Thursday on CNBC that she has been focused on talking with brands like Coca Cola, Visa and State Farm, along with their chief marketing officers and chief executives.

“I’ve lived on a lot of planes lately, direct conversations with CMOs and CEOs, and we cover a lot of ground and I focus on those that have either maybe paused or reduced spending to remind them about the power of the platform and the power of the user base and the the economic potential of them partnering with us again,” she said in her first media interview since Musk appointed her as CEO.

Yaccarino suggested that part of the difficulty is that some big advertisers might not have known who to talk to because the company has slashed its staff from about 8,000 workers to 1,500 since Musk’s takeover.

She said her role under Musk — who’s also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX — is clearly defined.

“Elon focuses on product design. He leads a team of extraordinary engineers and focuses on new technology,” she said. “So think about it as Elon is working on accelerating the rebrand and working on the future. And I’m responsible for the rest. Running the company from partnerships to legal to sales to finance, all the things.”

She said she has autonomy in doing that and described it as like a relay race.

“Elon works on the technology, dreams up what’s next, passes the baton to me. I bring it to market for economic prosperity, not only for our company, but for all of our customers, like our advertising partners,” she said.