When it Comes to Live Interviews, this X Did Not Mark the Spot

 Vox Media’s Code Conference, which features interviews with the biggest executives in the tech industry before a top-tier audience, is the perfect place for new CEOs to lay out a vision for their companies.

Except for Linda Yaccarino.

CEO of the social media site X (formerly Twitter) since June 6, 2023, she was the headliner last month at the conference’s 20th annual edition. She was interviewed by Julia Boorstin, CNBC’s senior media and tech correspondent.

It was an interview that the select audience of 800 movers and shakers likely won’t soon forget – and for all the wrong reasons.

The 38-minute interview was “awkward at times, including when the CEO was pressed about the company’s user and engagement numbers,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

“Yaccarino conducted one of the worst live interviews many of us had ever seen,” Fortune’s tech reporter Kylie Robison wrote.

The interview was “the unfurling of a CEO who appeared not to have a full handle on the company,” the Insider added.

We’ll pick up the pieces from this interview wreck to find five tips for communication professionals who are prepping an executive. But first, some background.

The back story
In the year since Elon Musk bought Twitter, the platform, renamed X, has struggled to attract advertisers and users, according to third-party data, and the growth of misinformation and hate speech on the site has been criticized.

The controversy over Yaccarino’s interview began before it started. The program originally called for General Motors CEO Mary Barra to speak before Yaccarino. But Barra dropped out the week before, citing the autoworkers’ strike.

A quick invitation was sent to Yoel Roth, who resigned late last year as Twitter’s head of trust and safety. Musk then accused him of pedophilia, part of a social media campaign against him. Roth’s attendance wasn’t confirmed until Monday, Sept. 25, 2023, according to journalist Kara Swisher, a Code Conference co-founder.

Late the next day, conference organizers told Yaccarino she may want to change her time slot because of an unnamed replacement for Barra. She wasn’t told of Roth’s appearance until the morning of Sept. 27, which gave her the day to prepare for her evening interview, according to Swisher and the Insider.

During Roth’s interview, he talked about the death threats he received as result of the online harassment. He also questioned X’s efforts to reduce hate speech and the private company’s financial condition.

Roth’s views are well known, and he didn’t offer anything new at the Code Conference. Yet Yaccarino “seemed rattled and agitated as she took the stage” at least an hour after Roth, Robison of Fortune wrote.

Lessons to learn
Effective preparation of an executive for a media interview requires looking at the organization from the outside, anticipating tough questions a journalist will ask. Sometimes you must even risk angering the executive — before a reporter does.

Some reports have said Yaccarino’s team should have prepared her better. But in fiascos like this, the communications team’s advice is often ignored. Here are six lessons we took away after watching the interview:

1. Who’s on the program? A sympathetic Axios editor said on X that Yaccarino was “sandbagged,” one of a public relations professional’s worst fears. Swisher denied this, saying the conference doesn’t give advance notice to guests.

It would be nice to know the lineup ahead of time, but last-minute changes are not unusual at the conference, and the interviews are often challenging. Nonetheless, the conference has long attracted high-profile executives willing to run the gauntlet. The smart ones come ready for anything.

Yaccarino was not. When dealing with media, remember Ronald Reagan’s favorite Russian maxim: “Trust, but verify.” For Yaccarino and her team, the Spidey sense should have started tingling when Barra dropped out. Who would the conference get to replace her?

2. Address tough facts quickly. Boorstin began by asking for Yaccarino’s reaction to Roth’s description of the “terrible things that happened to him and also his experience at a company that months later you have come to run.”

Business news site Raconteur said, “Any media-trained executive would have known to keep their responses to any criticisms brief and look to move the conversation on to more comfortable ground.”

Not Yaccarino. She kept Roth the focus of her remarks for the first seven and one-half minutes of the interview.

3. Serve the main course. Yaccarino frequently lost her way amid her long-winded answers. Fortune’s Robison called her interview a “word salad,” but salads are better organized.

For example, when Boorstin presented third-party statistics on engagement and app downloads, Yaccarino responded: “When you put in context what has happened in the last 10 months, and specifically the last 12 weeks of listening to our employees, listening to our customers, those advertising customers that you reference that I was given such great advice that I could prove from a data-driven standpoint. And they’ll come back.”

Boorstin also asked what it’s like working with Musk, who has a “demon mode,” according to biographer Walter Isaacson. Yaccarino said she’d never experienced it, but it was part of a 272-word answer that touched on the company’s “feedback” loop, her experience with other CEOs and the importance of internal debate. She ended by wishing they could spend more time on the company’s performance.

4. Details, details. As Yaccarino walked out on the stage, her first words were ironic in hindsight, given her difficulty articulating a vision for her company.

“Where am I going?” she asked, uncertain which of the two chairs to take.

It’s a small thing, but knowing the set-up of an interview makes an executive more comfortable. First impressions matter.

Inattention to detail showed up again. Boorstin’s notes were on cards with the conference logo on the back. Yaccarino’s notes were on a plain white card, which she explained: “It’s been a day. I was supposed to put an X on it. I was watching the interview, and I didn’t have time.”

Moreover, nearly 12 minutes into her interview, she still couldn’t let go of Roth’s comments.

More revealing, when Yaccarino showed her phone to the audience, she didn’t have the X app on her home screen, as Insider pointed out.

These were opportunities missed for a company in the middle of rebranding.

5. Lead with the news. After more than 12 minutes, it was Boorstin, not Yaccarino, who highlighted important news about X.

The platform is just about break-even in operating cash flow and will be profitable next year, Yaccarino confirmed.

She would have been better off bringing this up as soon as possible, creating a positive context for questions by Boorstin about the app’s operating statistics that she couldn’t or didn’t want to answer.

6. Be Prepared. The Code Conference wasn’t the first interview where Yaccarino seemed uninformed. In a first-ever profile published by the Financial Times the day before her conference interview, Yaccarino was unaware of Musk’s practice of running the X business though his phone (“Maybe I should take a note of what you’ve just said!) and didn’t know about his pledge last year to establish a content moderation council (“That’s news to me.”)

The story also featured a photo of her in a crucifixion-like pose, a regrettable posture.

On-the-job training?
There are more lessons from Yaccarino’s interview, such as her unsympathetic response to antisemitism on X or her failure to back up her boss’s plan for a paywall.

Maybe she’s taking time to learn them. On Oct. 10, she canceled her interview during The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference, which took place Oct. 16-18. X cited the war in the Middle East.

Tom Corfman can tell when CEOs are ready for tough questions. He was a business reporter and editor for the Chicago Tribune and Crain’s Chicago Business for 25 years. He’s now a senior consultant with Ragan Consulting Group.

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