Unilever has surrendered to social media bully Elon Musk

There are few people who can make a quivering lapdog out of one of the world’s biggest CPGs.

But that appears to be what’s happened to Unilever. How so? After Elon ‘Space Karen’ Musk launched a lawsuit against it for conspiring with an advertising industry group to boycott the increasingly toxic Twitter/X, it’s agreed to return ads to the social media platform.

“It feels like Unilever has surrendered to the bully who declared ‘war’ on it”

So, with apologies to Mrs Merton, what convinced Unilever to capitulate to the second-richest person in the world? In a short statement, Unilever said X had committed to “ensure the safety and performance of our brands on the platform”. But it feels like they’ve simply surrendered to the bully who declared “war” on them and other boycotting brands and told them to “go f*** yourself”.

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How long can resistance from the other companies – Mars among them – named in the lawsuit now last?

The action was widely seen as the maddened response of a megalomaniac who, despite espousing freedom of speech, couldn’t bear brands diverting their marketing budgets away from his platform, so sought to strongarm them back. It still is that. But it appears to be working.