People don’t respond well to social media logos, but they really hate the new Twitter X, according to a study of 500 people by ad and idea testing company System 1 Group. The firm specializes in advertising and idea tests that measure emotion to provide accurate predictions of the business impact of creativity.
System 1 Group used its new Test Your Idea program, which the company developed this year to mimic the successful ad scoring program Test Your Ad. Both programs measure consumers’ real-time emotional responses to sight, sound and motion, and produce predictive scores indicating potential for short-and-long term profitability. The report details Emotional Response – what audiences feel and how intensely they feel it. The 500 testers evaluated the new X logo against the old Twitter logo, the Reddit logo, the Threads logo and the Truth Social logo. Each respondent saw every logo and the results reflected an overwhelming low Star Rating which predicts the business potential of a given idea. Using a 1-5 Star scale, the highest scoring logo from this test came in at only 1.5 Stars.
What’s more, notes the firm, the X logo elicited the highest Emotional Intensity score and drew the highest amount of disgust among the respondents. The reason, System 1 found, is the one-dimensionality of the white X on a black background, and the absence of “life” elements connoting nature such as a bird, water, or the sun.
“Based on how all the logos tested, I would say that social media has a logo problem,” said John Kearon, Founder & President of System 1 Group. “To add to this, social media may be suffering from sensory overload from the consumer’s perspective. The number of social media platforms has proliferated tremendously over just the past few years and we may be seeing a result of too many options.”
