Musk has promised to follow the PR industry playbook

But we don't seem happy about it - what does that teach us about the nature of Trust?

There are some core principles of good reputation management which attract almost universal support from leaders of the communications industry: Transparency, Purpose, Action and Accountability.

As he took control of Twitter, Elon Musk vowed to live by all four of these principles. PR is a discipline that craves a seat at the top table and in this case, the richest person in the world has not only taken our advice, he has applied it to the business which we spend all our time on. But we’ve been oddly reluctant to thank him for it.

Let’s consider how Musk followed our sage guidance:

Transparency.

More transparency is regularly offered up by PR people as a way to build trust and confidence in a brand. The more radical the transparency the better.

As Meltwater’s Head of Marketing?Wesley Mathew?recently counselled: “True disruption is not easy and stems from bravery; and what’s braver than a strategy of radical transparency?”

What is more radical than pledging to make Twitter’s algorithm open source so that the world can scrutinise it for bias?

Purpose.

Every major communications agency has a purpose offer. Some have hitched their entire sales pitch to it. Global agency WE advises: “The public look to brands for bold action on social, economic and political issues. How brand leaders engage with these topics can make — or break — a company’s reputation.”

A brand’s stated purpose doesn’t have to be universally admired. Indeed, purpose campaigns are increasingly political and polarising. Agree or disagree with a brand’s mission, at least it stands for something, right?

Musk’s stated purpose is to save democracy by rebuilding free speech principles. That is a purpose of clarity and scale that Nike or Starbucks can only dream of.

Action.

A brand’s words must be matched by its deeds. So it is written. Last year, announcing his PR firm’s new mission, Richard Edelman?said: “I want us to get clients to change now, not to wait for a crisis to force it. I want us to be brave enough not to answer the client’s brief literally. I want us to re-consider the strategy and to recommend the action that creates a catalytic moment in time for a business or brand.”

Well, Musk re-considered Twitter’s strategy and got ahead of a crisis by vowing to take action to eradicate the bots that blight his new platform and deal a major blow to the problem of fake news that so many of us worry about.

Accountability.

But hang on. Surely no one person should be able to wield the kind of influence that Musk now does as the sole owner of the world’s “town square”? This concentration of media power and corporate influence over public life has provoked concerned noises from everyone from CNN journalists to Jeff Bezos. Better, surely, for a company of this strategic influence to be in public hands?

But Musk’s bid revealed that the shareholder model provided no public safeguards. Twitter had become gripped by?managerialism. Reuters reported that CEO Parag Agrawal’s ill-fated response to Musk’s offer was to reassure his team that “we as employees [rather than shareholders] control what happens.”

This is what?PR Week called “The Age of Accountability” and, as a privately-held company, we will know exactly who Twitter’s beneficial owner is and what his interests are. We can make a judgement about whether to use the platform accordingly.

Until Musk’s bid turned hostile, how many people knew that a Saudi prince was a major shareholder? What calculations prompted Vanguard to up its own stake in response to Musk’s approach? Public ownership did not provide accountability - it was a black box.

So by offering transparency, purpose, action and accountability, Musk has proved a model student of the communications industry. Yet, the reaction from our industry has been guarded at best.

The reason for this is that none of the principles we espouse is really the most important driver of trust. Audiences place trust in brands and individuals who are, above all, like themselves. Never more so than in a febrile, polarised context like the battle for Twitter’s soul.

While Musk has been quick to say that he will adhere to all hate speech regulations worldwide and go further than Twitter currently does to curb misinformation and mobbing, he has signalled that he has libertarian instincts that jar with the progressive values that shape so much of the PR industry’s thinking.

In The Networked Age, the first rule of reputation management is “Who You Are Is As Important As What You Do.”

Despite being the most powerful PR practitioner in the world, Musk is not one of us - and we distrust him for it.