← Uncensored CMO
Uncensored CMO
The future of X: winning back advertisers, breaking the news & building the world’s most powerful AI
00:51:06
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- [00:06]
John Evans
Ladies, gentlemen, welcome back to the uncensored cmo. Now, I think it's fair to say that one social media platform that's had its fair share of challenge over the last few years has been X. So that's why in this episode, I'm really excited to be sitting down and talking to their very first global head of marketing since Elon took over, Angela Cepeda. And she shares with me all the plans that she and the team have got to win advertisers back and grow the platform. This is a really interesting conversation. She is wonderful. I know you'll enjoy this. Welcome to the show.
- [00:38]
Angela Cepeda
Thank you for having me. Great to see you.
- [00:40]
John Evans
Good to have you on the show. So thank you for. Thank you for doing this. Now you've just moved. Well, recently moved. Not just moved, but recently moved from five years at Hyundai over to X. That feels like quite a. Quite a big jump.
- [00:51]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah.
- [00:51]
John Evans
What have been the perceptions maybe you had of X as a platform and a business compared to reality? How's it been since you started?
- [00:58]
Angela Cepeda
Well, it is a big question and a lot of people did think it was a really big move and some people were really surprised. But you know, Hyundai is an incredible company. I had an incredible opportunity there and it was fantastic. And a lot of people ask me like, well, why did you leave? You know, five years, almost five years as cmo. That's a long tenure while it was still great and I love the company and always will be a cheerleader for it. You know, I was feeling a little bit like maybe it was time to take another opportunity. And it is true. I knew Linda Yaccarino, who's the CEO, CEO of X and was very excited about her choice to go to the platform when she had taken the job. She's just hit her two year anniversary, but she had had a long standing career at NBC Universal and I thought that was bold and I thought it was incredible. I thought it was terrific. And so we remained close and in conversation and you know, we just ended up having a discussion at one point and she said, would you ever think about leaving Hyundai? And I said, maybe. Depends on the opportunity. And I think I thought at the time there was, and I still believe this actually that there is no other social media platform that is probably talked about more than X. The rapid innovation of the platform, the excitement of our ownership under Elon Musk, and there is really no surrogate for the platform. We are in constant conversation about what's next and the list is immense. I mean, even preparing to talk to you Today I thought this is just the most dynamic and culturally relevant platform out there and to be asked to come do global head of marketing and the job that's behind that is a really big one. People ask me all the time, like, is it, well, what's it like? Is it, you know, how does it compare to Hyundai? I say now it's the same, but it's different. There was long term planning for Hyundai, let's say for like car launches, but it was a day to day conversation on how to hit those sales goals. It's a little bit the same at X. I mean, of course we're not launching any cars, but we have long term goals that we have to hit as a company, but we're actively driving every single day to help our advertisers come back to the platform. And then of course, because it's literally a reflection of what's happening in culture, we're reacting to it as well. So. And you know, it's under the leadership of Elon Musk. I mean, I think everyone knows now his philosophy on how he runs business. You know, he came in, he, he doged it. I guess doge wasn't a term we knew two years ago. But you know, we don't say we're a startup because it was a company that existed before in the name of Twitter. But we're a restart. And so we are, we are scrappy and we work very, very hard together and we have very aggressive goals. So I mean it's, it is dynamic and it's, it's very exciting.
- [03:47]
John Evans
Oh, you mentioned Elon there. You've got an incredibly famous owner. Yes, everyone's got an opinion about X as a platform. You know, far, far more of other social media platforms as well. What kind of challenges does that bring you as the person that's leading marketing? And I guess the flip side of that is what opportunities might that give you as well?
- [04:04]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah, it is a challenge, but it's also an opportunity. I mean, we think he's incredibly fantastic. I mean, I think history will prove that he'll be one of the most instrumental people of the 21st century, bar none. How he all gets it done in one day or, you know, I have no idea. It's, he's got a lot of, you know, he's really been instrumental and for us he is the visionary of the platform. I mean, what was Twitter, which was a limited character text based platform, has now aggressively grown in the last two years to be video centric with over 300 new products that have been delivered on the platform, a lot of innovation and brand safety and just incredible momentum forward. And now we've just announced about a month ago the merger between xai, his AI company, and X, which makes it one of the most dynamically and relevant AI platforms available. Because the benefit to XAI is that it's learning from a dynamic and real time platform that's fueled by real conversation. And for X, it provides a lot of innovation, personalization and real time insights. It's going to make your feed be so much more personalized to you. So there's benefits on both sides, but all of that is under his leadership and so we embrace that. While, you know, people have opinions about him, he's a user of the platform and you know, in many ways using it to express his opinions, which we hope that's what everybody does. And we have now community notes in place to help, you know, with misinformation or disinformation. And so we hope it's a neutral place for a lot of people to come. With nearly 600 million users on the platform today. So that's a lot to unpack in that question. But he's been fantastic, I think for us overall.
- [05:57]
John Evans
Yeah, I mean, you sort of referenced it there, but the whole free speech angle I think is a really big part of it. I mean he, I think he would say, wouldn't he? That's one of the reasons why the acquisition happened, was to protect everyone's right to free speech.
- [06:08]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah, free speech. And unlike in other parts of the world, like amia, free speech is a cornerstone of the Constitution of the United States. It's the First Amendment. So it is really important. And you know, legacy media has been found without a stat for me to name, for the audience to be a little biased in many senses. And it's also a little behind in breaking news. That's what's amazing about X. We have almost every political forefront personality on the platform, celebrities on the platform, and they actually break big news on the platform. You know, for example, President Biden, he announced his removal of himself from the presidential election last fall on X. Tom Brady, a pretty famous NFL football player, announced his retirement on X. Beyonce announced her Cowboy Carter tour on X. They didn't do it on legacy media. So that's one of the profound differences, is that it's really happening in real time and that's what makes it great. And then people get to express their opinions. The other thing is we found the big difference between X and the other social media platforms were really positioned or maybe depositioned differently from the others is that this platform is where people come to be leaned in, they are actively engaged. Were there other platforms where maybe you're just doing the swipe? The swipe, the swipe. That's a very tuned out, leaned back behavior. We want to keep people leaned in. And I think that dialogue you still do on the platform is what makes it unique and that's what we love about it.
- [07:46]
John Evans
The thing is interesting, you said, the thing I've really embraced with X actually has been when some breaking news story happens, I look to X to find out the alternative point of view. Yeah, so I mean so many examples but I mean like the Trump assassination attempt was just wild because what was being reported in the media compared to on the ground, real time accounts from people that were there, it was, it was, it was much quicker. It turned out to be much more accurate in terms of what people were saying on the ground than what was being reported is incredible. And then in terms of like, you know, we talk about fact checking, don't we?
- [08:21]
Angela Cepeda
Right.
- [08:21]
John Evans
But you take like Covid for example, which is just wild because at the time, of course no one would, would talk about the lab leak theory as an example. But on X you could find, you know, scientists who were kind of, you know, explaining what most likely turned out to be the case. But again, you wouldn't know that if, unless you had, unless you had an alternative media source, you know.
- [08:41]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah, it is a place for people to put information out immediately. It is a little bit of citizen journalism, a lot of it's opinion. But to your good point as a user, you're scrolling and you're looking at everyone's input and then collectively you can decide on what the right answer is. But you are getting multiple voices with multiple points of view. We find that one of the number one reasons why especially markets like Japan which has happened when they had their unfortunate big earthquake, it was the platform that people could go to about giving updates on if they were safe or where they were, what was happening with certain communities. We saw this here in Los Angeles with the unfortunate Palisade fires. You know, it was really hard. And I live here in Los Angeles and it was hard to find out what was happening. But you go to X and people are giving you real time information who are on the ground giving you updates. So that's really fantastic. We see this happening a lot. So it is that forum, it is, you know, what we would say, the global town square where many voices come together collectively to help put together the picture of very Complex situations and when they happen in real time, you know, the story unfolds. But that's what's kind of exciting. People want to know what's happening in the now. They don't want to wait till someone's wrapped up the whole story and give it to me in a week of what happened. They do want to know what's happening right now. And that's what actually X can give you.
- [10:01]
John Evans
The other interesting thing, I've been running experiment for about three or four years on X, which is having two different accounts where I actively choose people with different political persuasions. And what's really, really interesting about that is you take the presidential election last year, seeing the reaction to the same event being reported completely differently, almost as if it's a win for that particular side. It was wild and it was really interesting in the UK actually, because our politics would lean probably one way. And just, you know, some say, you know, some well known politicians, UK were completely flummox by Trump winning. It was almost like they didn't believe it. They just could not.
- [10:39]
Angela Cepeda
Right.
- [10:39]
John Evans
And yet I was following accounts on both sides. But what I was following, it was not a surprise at all. You know, such a good point. It's so interesting how our view of the world and our perception of the world is so influenced by the news we consume and where we get our news from. And I think there's a, there's almost an accountability, isn't there, to make sure that we, I mean, Caitlin Moran, who's a journalist in the uk, actually wrote about this fairly recently, saying how she's curated, perfectly curated her algorithm to sort of train the algorithm to make sure that she gets the right kind of content, I think that's a really, a really important thing, isn't it? Because otherwise we can get down these rabbit holes of.
- [11:12]
Angela Cepeda
You can, you can definitely. But I think you make a really good point. I mean, the US election's a really good one to understand how information in different places, other than one that's dynamically driven by content by many, really got it wrong. Even up to the last minute, the legacy media had really predicted that Kamala Harris was going to win. And come to find out, not even close. But if you had actually been following on X, or there's some betting sites that actually, you know, you could even bet on the election if you want to. They were actually predicting that Trump was going to win, which is where people were putting their real money, which was really fascinating. So I think when you get to a point where you have a Social media platform where other people can participate in the conversation. You are not going through that singular, focused, you know, channel of how the news comes out. And I do think bias runs both ways. But that's what I like about the platform is that you, if you open yourself up to other voices, you can get a full picture and that's. That. That's ultimately the best way to make a decision. So I think it depends on the individual user. You know, I try to have my own feed be filled with all kinds of voices so you can see both sides. And also to understand how people feel if they're. If they don't really agree with your point of view and understand why they're not agreeing with you. I think that's a good way to come to a place where we have middle ground, which is what I think we all need these days. So 100. It'll be an interesting chapter in history. I do think it's very heightened right now, but maybe with social media platforms like X trying to stand for things like your voice matters and can be heard here, as long as it's not inciting violence or harmful content. Your point of view is actually your point of view and you should be able to express it.
- [13:03]
John Evans
It's a good thought, though, because like, as you say, it's very easy, isn't it, to kind of only hear voices that are the same as yours and to get more and more down a certain path or something. What's the role of the X platform to help people think differently and broaden their minds? Because as a society it feels like, you know, we're breaking apart a bit, aren't we? We become more polarized on political issues and actually there's potentially a role where it can unite us by helping us see the other side.
- [13:30]
Angela Cepeda
It is up to the individual user. My timeline will look different from yours, that's for sure. But I do think things are interesting. We just held last week in New York what we call Client Council. It's a meeting for our top advertisers and holding companies that was part of new fronts. And in between each speaker's section, we put up on the screen a QR code. And then one of the speakers who was ready to speak, their top people to follow on the platform with the idea of, you know, how to enhance your timeline, basically. So, you know, open up your aperture to different voices, different areas of maybe interest that you hadn't thought before, because I think who you follow really makes a difference. But that's. That is something to think about. It was actually a clever little thing we did just for that meeting.
- [14:16]
John Evans
The people I respect the most at Xionex are those people that really think about what influence they want in their feed. It might be looking at how to prioritize your day. It might be looking about health and fitness. It might be kind of mental health in terms of how you think about it. But really thinking about what do I want to be fed in a positive sense rather than a negative sense and kind of training the algorithm accordingly and really think about whose voice you want in your head.
- [14:39]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah, we'll add that. But I do think that that could be the power of the platform, honestly, because you can, you can follow it in a way that you can hear voices that you just only want to hear from. I personally think that that's limiting. I, you know, I follow, I follow people that people would probably be surprised. I follow, but I like to hear what they have to say because I think that helps you give you greater understanding.
- [15:00]
John Evans
Yeah. I've got a handful of people I follow where I'd probably say I disagree with 99% of what they say. It drives me slightly angry.
- [15:07]
Angela Cepeda
It's hard not to comment sometimes, but you're like, oh, that's.
- [15:10]
John Evans
I'm trying to make sure that I always remain open to both sides. I might be unusual like that, but I. I sort of get weirdly obsessed with making sure I've got both points of view in my feed.
- [15:20]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah.
- [15:20]
John Evans
So I can go, okay, who do I think has called this one? Right?
- [15:23]
Angela Cepeda
You know, Exactly. Yeah. It's a hard practice, but I think it's something that from a societal standpoint is it's a good thing because we all are different and we all come at things from a very different perspective. But I do think that there's been a higher propensity for people to go with one side of the voice versus the other. And lack of understanding or dialogue between the two has really gotten to an all time low. That's not a good thing. So I think anything we can do to help both sides have greater understanding so we can come to a place where we can all live a little more civilly with each other would actually be a really good thing.
- [15:57]
John Evans
That would be a really, really good idea. It'd be a really great thing. And you mentioned Tom Brady earlier as well. And I think one probably, maybe the primary reason most people use X is just to get the latest breaking news on their sports team or big transfers and that sort of thing. Is that right? Because my impression is that's certainly Why I started was following my cycling team. My team.
- [16:15]
Angela Cepeda
You know, it's 100% correct. It's 80% of the reasons why people come to X is because of sports. No doubt. I think people think right now it's for politics and news, but that's not the case. It's first it's sports, then it moves down to lifestyle, entertainment, any type of media, music, movies, etc. And then it moves down into news and politics. But it's just been so heightened, I think, with politics, because we've been in some very big, you know, electoral moments, both in EMEA and the United States. So people are like, oh, it's just a place for news and politics. No, it's a place for sports. But it's huge for the us it's huge also for markets like emea. And there are big moments. You know, during Champions League, Declan Rice hit the two goals within seven minutes. I mean, massive conversation explodes on the platform. And we just had some major moments in U.S. sports. We just had the NFL draft. Shador, you know, he took a little bit to finally get drafted. I mean, 400% times more posts. You know, he was just really somebody people were watching. And it just took so long. It just, you know, lots of conversation, which is incredible. Luca, who was a basketball player who was traded from Dallas Mavericks to the LA Lakers, also massive conversation on the platform. So it's about trading, it's about games. And, you know, super bowl is a big US Event. It's the largest day in the US for where eyeballs go. So it's a great day for football, American football, but it's a great day for advertisers. And we saw a tremendous spike this year over year on super bowl because people are engaging in real time. But we see it in all sports across the board, globally, and, you know, locally in the US So it's. It's where fans come to congregate. I mean, who's more engaged than a sports fan? So we see a fantastic upgrade. And now we've launched what we're calling X portals, which are curated experiences on the platform. We started with the NFL, we moved into the NBA. There's a time period called March Madness, which is college basketball, which there's lots of games and betting. We did what's called, they call it March Madness, but we called it the X Bracket Challenge. I think we had the best first prize, which was if someone had picked a perfect bracket, they got a trip to Mars. That's because we have a.
- [18:34]
John Evans
Only you could offer that we had.
- [18:35]
Angela Cepeda
An owner who had an entree into giving that as a prize. No one wanted, no one got a perfect bracket. But it's a very brand safe environment because it's content that we do with all of those league partners which we have deep relationships with. So all NFL curated content, all NBA curated content. So that's where fans can go to check stats and updates and games and also converse and see really great content all in one place. Some of those leagues today, I don't know if I could speak to that intelligently for mia, but it's a very bifurcated experience. So NFL in the US is on multiple streaming platforms. Hard for, you know, hardcore fans to get all the content in one place. It is a second screen experience, but that's what people are used to today at least you can see all things NFL one place. And so that it's just to give a better user engagement and fans love it and more to come. We'll do a lot with F1, of course, FIFA coming up and then Olympics and that'll be incredible platforms for just fans globally to engage.
- [19:37]
John Evans
And you mentioned brands as well. One thing that I think is unique about X is that brands can enter the conversation in a very simple and funny way and get absolutely talked about. I mean, it's a bit of a sad example. My football team, soccer team in the UK almost set the record for the worst season in history in the Premier League.
- [19:55]
Angela Cepeda
Sorry to hear that.
- [19:56]
John Evans
I know it's been a tough year, right? And Derby county were hold the record and we managed to draw with Manchester City at the weekend and within minutes our team had said, you know, sorry to get your hopes up. Derby county, basically because Derby were hoping that we would be worse than them and we would take the crown of worst ever, you know, Premier League, you know, team. But you know, it seems to be somewhere where brands can be a bit funny. They can have a tone of voice and they can insert themselves in the conversation in kind of clever ways.
- [20:26]
Angela Cepeda
Memes are the central part. I mean, they are hilarious. The Internet is a very, very funny place at the end of the day. But some brands do it really well. Some of them have incredible community managers. We should give an award for big.
- [20:38]
John Evans
Shouts out to community managers.
- [20:40]
Angela Cepeda
Big shout outs.
- [20:41]
John Evans
You should have a league of the community managers behind the streets.
- [20:44]
Angela Cepeda
That's actually a great idea because, you know, you have to be in real time. That's one of the hard parts of the job is actually, you know, someone will say, did you see what just broke on X? I'm like no, I was in three meetings like what happened? And it could be major news. I'm sure major things happened this morning. I've missed it as I was getting ready to speak to you today. But that's the dynamic part of it. But there's some really hilarious ones that have happened recently. Mu dang. It was a hippo that went viral from I think Asia and it went all over the globe. Brands were hilarious about their postings about that. Then to celebrities like Ben Affleck. You know he went through a time in his life recently where he just didn't look like he was all that happy. It's called Sad Affleck. Lots of, lots of brands had things to say about that but even recent ones. It was actually an influencer on TikTok. His name is Ashton Hall. He did this crazy morning routine. He gets up like 4:30 in the morning, he works out and he drinks this Saratoga water. That's the brand, it's this blue bottle. And then later he dunks his face in a bowl of ice water with the Saratoga water. And memes went crazy. Brands jumped on it and but those new memes didn't happen on TikTok. They came over to X which I think was really interesting, where brands really jumped in on that. And then the latest one of course was the announcement of Pope Leo the 14th genius. So many funny ones. The best was Popeyes which is a fast food franchise in the, in the U.S. i don't know if you guys.
- [22:11]
John Evans
Have any as well.
- [22:13]
Angela Cepeda
And it was Pope. Yes. I mean I was thinking how long was someone waiting to have that be there someone mess.
- [22:20]
John Evans
I was on LinkedIn going someone tell me if this was pre planned. And apparently yes it was.
- [22:25]
Angela Cepeda
Well kudos for them.
- [22:26]
John Evans
Someone was waiting for this to happen and it had been ready to go.
- [22:30]
Angela Cepeda
Aa for that community manager who actually had content to precede what they were gonna put out there on social media. And the other one that was hilarious that I thought it was funny. Jeff Bezos did his Blue Origin launch with Lauren Sanchez and, and Katy Perry and other celebrities. And then Katy Perry when she landed kissed the ground and somebody, I forget the brand but they wrote I kissed the ground and I liked it. I mean it was funny. So I think you can be a little cheeky and humorous and brands can have fun and participate in the conversation much differently in that forum than you can in different settings and social media platforms. So we love it. We bring them on. I mean the more that we could get of that I think the better.
- [23:13]
John Evans
Well I know my day job at System One actually we study a lot. Lot of the. What creates an emotional response and particularly online surprise and humor, like the two most effective things. So something I didn't expect that interrupts you, that I wasn't expecting that. Or as you say, have, you know, having a cultural joke about something or making people laugh or smile is highly effective. We remember those things, don't we?
- [23:36]
Angela Cepeda
And I think everyone every now and again needs that little bit of break, that little bit of humor in the day. I mean, sometimes it all can seem so serious. Right? There's a lot of heavy news out there and information. I mean, I think we're all suffering from a little bit of information overload, just by the way our lives are so digitally connected now. So when you get that moment of a break that actually goes, oh yeah, that's actually really funny. I'm glad somebody said it. And now I get to take advantage of it. And I think it just brings joy to people and I think that's why they lean in and they engage further.
- [24:08]
John Evans
It's a very British example of this. But the best one for me personally in the UK is there's a German supermarket called Aldi. I think you have it here.
- [24:17]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah, we do have it here.
- [24:17]
John Evans
You have the same supermarket, M and S, which is probably the most upmarket supermarket, they have this very famous cake called Colin the Caterpillar. It's like a caterpillar chocolate cake.
- [24:27]
Angela Cepeda
Right.
- [24:27]
John Evans
I'm curious, but Aldi are famous for copying everyone else's ideas. So they have Cuthbert the Caterpillar. Right. Anyway, Ms. Sued them for copyright infringement. Now rather than just counter sue and get into illegal spat on their ex fee, basically they did a free Cuthbert kind of meme and it had Cuthbert in jail basically.
- [24:48]
Angela Cepeda
Oh, hilarious.
- [24:49]
John Evans
And so they were basically trolling Ms. But everybody was on Audi's side. So even though they were technically in the wrong or infringing the copyright, they won the public debate because they just made a joke about the fact they were being bullied and that Cuthbert was in jail and please join our campaign to let Cuthbert out. And there were memes upon the memes and it just became this big thing. And M and S tried to respond, you know, by suggesting they came up with, you know, Kevin the carrot Cake rather than Cuthbert. Anyway, but it's just funny to see like brands, you know, Audi clearly won that one, but M and S was struggling to find their tone of voice. How do we deal with this?
- [25:25]
Angela Cepeda
How do we deal with this?
- [25:26]
John Evans
Our lawyers are telling us we can't talk about it.
- [25:28]
Angela Cepeda
And, you know, it is funny. I mean, that's a great example and I'm sorry I missed that one. But I do think brands that spar with each other, I guess that's the way I would put it. But as long as it has, I think, a light tone to it, I think, you know, fans will engage. No one wants it to get nasty and down to the real legal brass tacks. But if you can, have fun with it. And will a brand win out over another? Yeah, public sentiment will sort of rule the day, but, you know, good for Ms. For getting in there, trying to stand up for what they thought was right. And public sentiment, you know, went without Aldi. But I think that's, you know, interesting territory for even a brand marketer to think about. But using social media to sort of fight back.
- [26:10]
John Evans
Absolutely.
- [26:11]
Angela Cepeda
And if you do it in a way that has a sense of humor, I think nine times out of 10, both sides actually kind of win.
- [26:16]
John Evans
Yeah. You couldn't be more right now talking about brands. Obviously one of the challenges you faced over the last couple of years is advertisers taking their spend off the platform. And I think advertising revenue was down 40, 50%, I think, a couple of years ago.
- [26:31]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah, yeah. Thank you for reminding us.
- [26:32]
John Evans
Sorry about that. Bring the tone down a little bit. Yeah, exactly. And I know in the uk, I think it's different here, but kind of trust and trust in the platform is down a lot last year. And if I were to phone up, let's say, the top 10 people I know in media, most of them would say their main concern with X would be brand safety. Right. So what's kind of happened in the last couple of years to address that? And where are advertisers now? I mean, I know some big, high profile advertisers, Disney, Apple, Unilever, left the platform a couple years ago. Where are you in terms of kind of winning them back?
- [27:05]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah. Such a big question.
- [27:07]
John Evans
Apologies for the.
- [27:08]
Angela Cepeda
No, no, it is an important one because it's certainly going to be part of our history. We're always going to have to, I think, remember, and it was true after acquisition, when Elon Musk bought the platform, a lot of advertisers did leave for multiple reasons. One of the biggest was that, yes, we did remove sort of that centralized content moderation from the platform and went to a community note today. Community Notes, which I previously said has about a million people within that group of community noters, has now been adopted by YouTube. It's been adopted now by Meta, who announced that in January at CES and now just recently of TikTok. So what was sort of this bizarre way of moderating the platform has now become sort of the industry standard, which we're thrilled about. We think that's really fantastic and we'll continue to improve. Community Notes with input now from other social media platforms, we put updates on our platform on how it constantly can be improved and that's fantastic. The other part of it is that we have partnerships now with IAS and DoubleVerify that help us with our brand safety. We're happy to report that our brand safety and brand sustainability are in the upper 90s, so we're on par with our other platforms now. And then 96 out of the top 100 advertisers are back, which is really great. Now, some of that is timing. There were a lot of things we listened. Our CEO, Lindy Acarino, she is incredible with what she's done to help, I think have this one to one conversation with top advertisers and holding companies about the fuller picture of what is available to them on X. We have incredible reach with a huge user base and then we have a lot of tools in place to really make it a very interesting place for advertisers to show up. And so she's been having that hard conversation even still in the background. We were doing the hard work that advertisers had asked us to do and that's been the biggest thing, is listening to what the issues were and having us respond as a platform. And we have done a lot of that hard work. So we have some big advertisers who are back and we're finding out now that other advertisers are like, wait a minute, if XYZ is on the platform, maybe I need to be there too. So we have some bold CMOs who, you know, whether they had budgets that allowed them to do innovation or some kind of testing on the platform, they've made some big bets with us and they have turned out to be really fantastic. And so now we're getting a new audience of advertisers to lean in and said, help me understand how I can show up too. So I think it's. We're certainly not at what we are pre acquisition levels of advertising spend, but we're eking our way up and you know, we've had a new updated valuation for the platform, which was on par to what it was when Elon purchased it. So we're, we're in good fiscal health. We feel very, we feel very bullish on the future and we feel really good about where we are right now.
- [30:07]
John Evans
I mean, kudos on community notes. I think it's a really clever, smart thing to do, I think. I can't remember the exact detail. I'm sure I saw Mark Zuckerberg talk about if he tried to centrally moderate every content across meta here we have to spend billions in terms of employing an entire army. So it just makes common sense, doesn't it? You need to find a different mechanism to more effectively kind of moderate content.
- [30:32]
Angela Cepeda
I agree. And I think it also comes back to maybe what you said earlier about having multiple voices with multiple points of view provide that moderation. So I think that's really helpful. I mean it is true with community notes. It really helps for people who have posted and that they got a community note. They're 60% less likely to repost it and then the original author of it is 80% likely to delete it. So it is freedom of speech without freedom of reach and it is this global platform of community notors that is helping it be, you know, a good safe place for content, which then means it's a good place for brands to show up.
- [31:14]
John Evans
You mentioned Elon getting involved in politics as well. I think that's a really big part of this, the whole situation, because there's a really interesting bit of research actually done in the UK just after Brexit. So Brexit was our big kind of divisive moment where you know, every, everyone fell down rather than falling down left and right wing lines. Everyone was like either you'll leave or remain. It's really fascinating. These couple of guys, Andrew Tenzin Ear Murray, did a brilliant bit of research called the Empathy Delusion. And it's quite fascinating that what they identified is that people that work in advertising and marketing are much, were a much, much more likely to be remain voters, almost entirely remain voters. But they also, in terms of moral frameworks, were far more individualistic and driven by fairness of the individual and less about the kind of group society cohesion. And where that played out was they were. They'd be far more less likely to support somebody on the other side than the normal person in the street. So most people, if you ask them, would be very happy to go for a drink or you know, see their son or daughter date someone who, you know, supported the other side of the argument. But in advertising and marketing they really wouldn't. They'd be very unlikely to do that because they'd let the politics get in the way of the transaction. So I think it was interesting that that's, you know, given that that's the audience making, deciding on the spend, making decisions on where that goes. I think that plays out a lot with this. And I know there's similar data in the US about what left versus right and whether they feel, you know, happy to have a dinner, have a meal with someone of the opposite persuasion and so on. The same sort of dynamic plays out, doesn't it?
- [32:40]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah, 100% true. I do think this is an interesting study and I hadn't heard that until you had told me about it. I do see this actually in some of my own personal interactions with other CMOs. It's really, I think, a block. I think it's a hard thing to explain to someone, like, look, your, your personal bias interest is not good for the ultimate benefit of the brand or service that you're representing and trying to grow. You have users on this platform and a lot of them, and they're not all bad people. They do sit on both sides of the aisle. So why would you not think about it in a new and fresh way? I think that bias is actually really true and I think it's a hard thing for CMOs to overcome, but you have to remove yourself. There was a quote recently that someone said, and I'm going to butcher it, so I'm going to surmise it, but it was basically the reason why great creative dies is because everyone's dying to have an opinion. And I think opinions need to actually be removed from the conversation. Data is also a great one to drive a lot of decisions and, you know, honest conversation about what's reality and what's perception. And again, I go back to that hard work that Linda Yaccarino did with some of these brands and holding companies was like, let me hear your issues. Here's where we really are as a platform and what else do I need to do to help overcome your concerns? And it's breaking down those barriers. And that's just, you know, X in particular, of how we're overcoming some of that bias. But it's true, there are, there are sometimes individuals that can keep, you know, us moving forward with advertisers, which is actually a shame because you're actually missing out on a very engaged audience.
- [34:21]
John Evans
Well, it's almost like rule number one in marketing is you are not the customer. It starts, doesn't it, with understanding your customer? And it's interesting, you say in terms of people missing out, presumably then advertisers that have come back to the platform, have maybe got an advantage because it's a bit like game theory, if everyone else is not moving and you're the one to move. Presumably there's some advantages to doing that.
- [34:41]
Angela Cepeda
Absolutely. We've had some great partners in our advertising community that have come back and come back in a strong way, doing very bold things, doing very creative things with us. The portals have allowed us to do a lot of things where we've been able to help brands come back and they're seeing huge gains in some of those decisions. And I think now it's the same thing that was true before, right. People were leaving the platform. Oh, maybe I need to too. Now it's people are coming back and then we see that brands are having a little bit of fomo, saying, actually, maybe I need to find out more here. So I think that's a good thing. But I mean, kudos to the, to the brands that actually stepped in first and said, let me give this a try, because they saw that the highly engaged audience plus all the innovation on the platform, there is just a place for X in their media buy. And that's what we want.
- [35:30]
John Evans
Now, another thing Elon's famous for, I think is certainly in terms of managing Tesla, is not advertising. And there's always a big debate.
- [35:39]
Angela Cepeda
Breaks my heart, breaks my heart.
- [35:41]
John Evans
There's always a big debate, isn't there, in marketing? Well, can you survive that advertising? Well, look at Tesla. It's become the most valued car company in the world without advertising. I've always argued, though, that the Elon is a media channel in his own.
- [35:52]
Angela Cepeda
Right and he did lots of promotion in different ways. It was, it was different than traditional advertising, but there was a lot of promotion and he himself was, was part of that. I mean, he's associated with the Tesla brand, but yes, as a true brand marketer, it breaks my heart just a wee bit, but I do understand it.
- [36:09]
John Evans
But with that in mind, I'm just curious to know from, from your point of view, what marketing wise in terms of. Of X and the future of X, what's your plan to market it? You know, to market. Because you're marketing to marketers, right?
- [36:22]
Angela Cepeda
Mostly.
- [36:22]
John Evans
Which is a curious.
- [36:23]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah, yeah. So my job is really two parts. One part has been the part I've been living and breathing since I came here six and a half months ago, which is what we would call sales enablement. So, yes, marketing to the marketers, supporting our sales team and all of the materials that they need, events and so on, that help fuel that Conversation, which is a huge, huge thing to do. But there is this other part that is part of the remit too, which is how do we actually grow our platform beyond our current monthly active users? And the big way that we're going to be able to do that is if eventually we go off our own platform and we speak to people who actually don't have us as part of their repertoire of social media platforms they go to every day. So we have been working in the background on a brand campaign. We're not quite ready to launch it. We have some individuals that we need to bring into that conversation. I think it's fantastic. I think it's actually what we need. Because when Twitter was switched from Twitter to X and then the vision of the Everything app was set out, there's a lot of difference between who we were before and who we are today. And a lot of people don't know that. A lot of people don't know how to really use the platform to their best benefit. And so we like to educate, but also get people excited about the power of the platform and why you should do it. You know, really it's about, we're positioned as whatever is breaking in culture. You have to go check X. There's no surrogate for that. There's no other social media platform that's going to give you that information. So we have this beautiful campaign. We hope to launch it someday. As a brand marketer, I'm salivating to do it because I know it'll have huge impact. I think people will give, get it instantly and be excited about what the platform actually delivers. But, yeah, there's a lot of hard work yet to be done there and yet to be manifested. And so we hope, we hope that we'll be able to do it.
- [38:19]
John Evans
It's a good point about changing conversations because most of the conversation has been about job cuts or brand safety or Elon's political points of view. And you kind of need to shift, don't you, to this is the future and this is how we kind of see the platform.
- [38:30]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah, those headlines seem to take over.
- [38:32]
John Evans
They do, don't they?
- [38:33]
Angela Cepeda
Which is really about the, you know, the blocking and tackling of how to run a company, which honestly, to, to the credit, it is a very fiscally sound company. You know, we were about 8,000 people, I believe, when he purchased the platform. We're hovering around 1300. You know, we are scrappy and we're lean. That's. We don't say we're a startup because we were a company before, but we are very much like a restart company. So we work really hard every day trying to achieve a lot of goals and at the same time, and it's like, goals go this way and then you all move forward. There's not one individually, but it's in the spirit of becoming fiscally sound and I think to do great things, big, bold things, and then the real part of the company, the real innovation, the actual engagement that you get on the platform, that conversation becomes secondary because everybody's talking about what happened when the acquisition happened. I mean, that's been two years now. So we're ready to have a different conversation and let people know behind the curtain how much has been done. I don't think there's been as much innovation that's been done on any social media platform as much as there's been on X. It's just so much to talk about, which is why we do meetings like the Client Council, which we did in New York. We're about ready to do one in London in June ahead of Cannes Lion. And, you know, we just need more people to understand about everything that has been done in the spirit of making this, you know, one of the most, I think, positive and foundational social media platforms that people can engage with.
- [40:01]
John Evans
Yeah. You mentioned the Everything app as well.
- [40:04]
Angela Cepeda
Yeah.
- [40:04]
John Evans
What's included in the Everything Everything? Literally.
- [40:09]
Angela Cepeda
There'S been a lot. I mean, one has been bringing video more forward. So now we have the Video tab, but we have new formats like vertical video and other types of video that really helps brands show up in a much more engaged way on the platform. So huge innovation with just video. Next is developments on potential things like xtv, which is still in development, but that could actually cast your X experience on your TV screen. A little bit like a YouTube experience, I've been told, which would be great. We are about ready to launch this year. X Money Visa is a partner in that that'll simulate like a peer to peer payment type application where you can exchange money through, you know, through a section on the app. And you could actually earn, you know, interest on the money that you hold within the app, which will be really interesting, exciting, a whole new dynamic of how money can exchange within the app, which hasn't really been done before. And then we're working towards things which we're now calling xdm, which is more of a private conversation part of the app, which will be another great thing that's coming. So just a lot of innovation on user engagement. And of course then the X portals are huge and then we haven't even talked about X Originals which that part of the company is just original content that we developed just for X. So we've developed 17 shows since this division has been started, which has been about a year ago. But we have incredible creators like Anthony Pompliano who has the show, the Desk from Anthony Pompliano that's just for X. And then he shares clips on other platforms. And then Chloe in Wonderland which her show is blowing up. She has about 30 million followers. I think there's over 120 million views of her shows. I think I have that stat right. I mean it's massive to have a celebrity like that. And we are about to announce, I couldn't say it today on this show, which I wish I could, but another huge celebrity who's going to do another show on the platform which is going to be fantastic. So all of that is other innovation that's happening. And then all of our partnerships with all of the sports leagues is continuous. So you know, that's a lot of work that's being done in real time. And then you know, constant innovation on our ads manager portion of the platform which allows advertiser to create better and more effective ads using Grok, which is the agent for XAI that's integrated into our platform which is giving a lot more ROI and just speed to market, giving real results on how those campaigns are working in real time. So tons of work with an incredible team across the country that is just trying to make this the best platform possible.
- [42:57]
John Evans
I've noticed the Grok integration has been really smart as well. Something I've noticed. I don't know if it's you see it across the platform but if there's anyone is unsure about a post they just literally just go ask Grok, is this real? And then you just get this really intelligent answer citing different sources and explain. So I can really see that. I mean a simple example, but that's another example.
- [43:18]
Angela Cepeda
It's actually a very utilitarian way to use it. AI is rapidly becoming the most fascinating thing that I think we're seeing not just on our platform but across the board. You know, link based search is. I mean if you're not using AI and don't see the power of it, it would be hard to go back to honestly just a regular Google search. Well, they have their own AI. The thing that's interesting about Grok is that it's fueled by xai, which is now the largest supercomputer in the world and they call it Colossus. It sits in Memphis, Tennessee in the United States. It was literally started and working in 122 days, which is phenomenal. I think a normal company might have taken years to do that. And it started with 100,000 GPUs, rapidly, within three months went to 200,000. I think by 2026 it'll be over a million. So that incredible computer power is what's actually fueling the intelligence that you see in the application, like you just mentioned, which is really incredible. And the thing that makes NowX really unique and XAI really unique is that XAI is learning from a dynamic, real time, culturally relevant platform that is happening with real human conversation. All the other large language models are learning on a single static database. So if, if you like, for example, the way they learn is, you know, latest information. You have to wait for someone to write an article and post it to the Internet. Where XAI has the benefit because of our relationship of sister companies now being merged closer together, you're getting that in real time. So it's rapid. That's so. I mean you could ask about something about the Pope. Let's just like Pope Leo the 14th on the moment it's happening and you would probably have real time information coming up on grok. So the power is really immense and we're really excited about what it's going to do next. The innovation behind that team is really fantastic and it's a game changer. And so it's rapidly becoming the leading reasoning AI out of the group. While ChatGPT has the most users, because it's been around for a couple years, we think that XAI and GROK will definitely start taking some leadership position there.
- [45:43]
John Evans
What's that point? I think, I think I saw a tweet from Elon showing that where GROK was ranked maybe a year ago, I think it's a year ago to now from I think it was 10, 12th place or something up to seconds. And the point he made, which I totally agree with, is momentum. Is everything like momentum, speed to market? Yeah, exactly. Speed and momentum is what predicts kind of future success.
- [46:04]
Angela Cepeda
So yeah, it's really great. It is really. And it's truth seeking. And that's why the real conversation on the platform is helping the actual agent, you know, be one of, one of the best is because it's actually engaging in real time conversation.
- [46:20]
John Evans
That's what people I think don't realize is that AIs are not like this homogenous thing where they all do the same thing. They've got inbuilt biases themselves that are quite radically different, actually. When you go and put the same prompt in a few different engines, how different you can get the answers.
- [46:34]
Angela Cepeda
How different you can get the answers. So this is. This is really exciting territory. So we'll see. You know, everyone has eyes on AI.
- [46:41]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [46:41]
Angela Cepeda
And we certainly have our hand in it too. And we are thrilled about the partnership and how much smarter it's just going to make X for not just users. It'll make your timeline very personalized. We call it unregrettable user seconds. So that means it's just so much. It's so personalized to you, it's going to feel great. But there's a lot to benefit the advertisers too. Just the scale of the platform. But now you get the personalization with doing AI, targeting AI audiences, the way that we can help you build your actual ad plans, but it's also giving you speed to market, which actually helps with your roi. So, I mean, just the power of all of that is just mind blowing. It's just mind blowing.
- [47:23]
John Evans
Well, maybe just finish up. Let's quickly talk about top tips if you're an advertiser or top tips if you're on the platform as a creator. What would your advice to people be to take advantage of it as an advertiser or as a creator?
- [47:34]
Angela Cepeda
Well, first of all, get on X, that would be my first thing as just a user. We need more people on the platform, the better. But if you don't really engage in the platform, you don't really know how to use it. And we have found that we have some CMOs who were a little delinquent on being on the platform. We had to help them get back on and help them understand how to really take full advantage of it. So there's that. I would say for advertisers for the last couple of years, because of our journey of where we've been, they tend to purchase advertising in key moments. Super bowl, key sports events or awards show, met Gala, you know, which was amazing. Rihanna showed the world her baby bump. And that tends to be like, you're on, you're off, you're on, you're off. And it's hard to upstart that. What you really could do is take advantage of understanding who your audiences are, which they are on our platform, finding those and having a consistent presence on the platform and, and then spiking with these moments. So you have both. It's sort of an. And strategy, not an or so we're having deep dialogues with all of our advertisers on how they can take advantage of that and how to do it in a way that they can scale it and have positive ROI with also brand lift and performance. So there's a full suite of products there to help advertisers do that. So that's for our advertisers and that's ongoing and we will continue to listen to what the advertisers want and, you know, be delivering on, you know, what that could actually offer them from content, from content creator strategy. I would say we are in still our development phases on what that looks like. Other platforms do some incredible tools for creators, which is great and we look at those and think we need to replicate something similar for us on X. All of that, hopefully by the end of the year will be a whole new content creator strategy with tools and monetization that equals our other social media platforms. So again, we have sort of a working task force that's going against that and understanding how important those creators are. We have some incredible creators today who have sort of figured out how the best way to use the platform. But for the greater scale of true creators and influencers and key markets, especially ones like emea, we could probably do a better job on delivering, I think best in market type of capabilities. So we're working on that and you know, that's part of our punch list of what we have to do as a platform. And you know, I think that's the spirit of X in general is that we are never stopping, we are always listening and we are always responding and we'll ever improve the platform day after day. And I think everyone at X actually has that positive attitude and you know, it's an organic, moving social media site. I mean, it'll never be, the work will never be done, which is really interesting and but yeah, those are great things that are upcoming and we're excited, excited to be launching that really soon.
- [50:24]
John Evans
Amazing. Angie, it sounds very exciting. Thank you for sharing it all with us and congratulations on everything that's been going on. It's been great to hear about it.
- [50:32]
Angela Cepeda
Great, thank you so much. Great being here.
- [50:34]
John Evans
Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to contact me, you can do I'm over on x at Uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn, where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.