GM suspends advertising on Twitter after Elon Musk takes over

• Names new head for European market

General Motors has suspended its advertising on Twitter with Tesla CEO Elon Musk as the owner of the social media platform. The temporary move aims at getting the Detroit-based automaker to know the direction in which Twitter is going.

GM is the first major automaker to make such a change at this stage.

“We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership. As is normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue,” the company told CNBC.

That move might be normal to General Motors but as of this writing, it’s the only major automaker to suspend its advertising in light of Musk’s takeover. Other brands, like Citroën for example, had a bit more fun with the news. “Hello to the social media platform owned by one of our competitors,” a tweet from the automaker said.

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Other notable automotive names such as Henrik Fisker have gone in the other direction. The well-known designer and CEO of EV startup Fisker Inc didn’t wait to find out if Musk’s bid to buy Twitter would go through or not. He deleted his account the same day that the news broke.

His automotive company remains on the platform. Concern from advertisers is not shocking or new, says Carscoops in a report.

According to another story from the Wall Street Journal, about a dozen brands have asked that their advertising be paused on Twitter.

Elon Musk has addressed advertisers specifically with a long post that ironically didn’t fit on Twitter in normal text form.

In the post he specifically says that “advertising, when done right, can delight, entertain and inform you; it can show you a service or product… that you never knew existed, but is right for you… Low relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content!”

He continued to thank those still advertising with the platform, adding, “Let us build something extraordinary together.”

For now, General Motors won’t be building anything together with Musk and Twitter.

New head for European market

Meanwhile, General Motors has appointed a new president to oversee its European arm, ahead of a huge reintegration into the continental market with a new EV-only line-up to be announced next year.

Jaclyn McQuaid takes over the position on Tuesday from Mahmoud Samara, who held the role for over a year and leaves his post citing family reasons.

Having been with the American firm for 22 years, McQuaid is said to bring his vast experience to the role, most recently helping it take top spot for full-size truck sales in the US.