Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess wants to tweet from next year. “In 2021 we want to communicate more intensively with politics, Twitter is the medium,” he writes on LinkedIn. In the business network, Diess’s account is one of those with the greatest growth in reach. More than 145,000 people are now following the Volkswagen boss there. He is well ahead of Tim Höttges from Deutsche Telekom and Joe Kaeser from Siemens.
This year, Diess succeeded several times in generating extensive reporting in traditional media about its LinkedIn activities. His father-daughter tour with the ID.3 electric vehicle to Lake Garda, for example, met with great interest. He also communicated on LinkedIn about his much-noticed meeting with Tesla boss Elon Musk. So far, Volkswagen has limited itself to referring to the LinkedIn posts from Diess via Twitter.
That will change. On Twitter, Diess wants to target political decision-makers and journalists more closely. The goal: to position yourself in debates. It should start on Twitter in January, according to company circles. Topics will include the transformation of the Group and electromobility, which is important for Volkswagen. It is said that Diess will also address the need to set up an extensive charging infrastructure and topics from the field of renewable energy. The Volkswagen boss has shown himself to be a festival of debate in recent years: He is the only CEO who is a regular guest on talk shows and repeatedly faces criticism from NGOs.
CEOs of German DAX companies have so far not been present on the short message service. They are too rough there. In addition, 280 characters offer little space for the presentation of complex content. When mistakes are made, the media quickly throw on the indignation machinery and try to provoke shit storms. A joint study by the consulting firms Egon Zehnder and Kearney on the social media activities of the 30 Dax bosses from November 2019 to October 2020 recently showed that only seven Dax CEOs are active on Twitter – for example Joe Kaeser from Siemens and Christian Small from SAP. After all, 16 CEOs are registered on LinkedIn. A team led by Michael Manske, Head of CEO Communications, supports Diess with his LinkedIn posts. Diess often writes articles himself. Volkswagen wants to keep things like this on Twitter with Diess’ posts.
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