10 times that Elon Musk proved Tesla doesn't need advertising (TSLA)

Mike Blake/Reuters

Tesla, famously or infamously, doesn't really spend an money on advertising. Contrast that with the traditional auto industry, which, for decades, has been among the biggest and most reliable ad spenders on the planet. In the "Mad Men" era, it was possible to devote an entire career to the Buick account and retire happily.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk isn't exactly anti-advertising; several years ago, on a quarterly earnings conference call, he even speculated that Tesla would eventually develop an ad budget, because that would support the media and media — journalism — needs support.

I'm not sure if he feels the same way these days, but he has certainly discovered the value of so-called "earned" media: that's the positive messaging around your products or services that satisfied customers offer on their own, without any prompting. Think of people posting Instagram photos of their Teslas, accompanied by rave reviews.

Other categories are "paid" and "owned." Paid is the old-school stuff: TV, print, radio, billboards, and now digital and social. It is what it sounds like; a company buys it, and these days that often means giving money to Facebook or Google.

Owned is advertising that belongs to the advertiser and that they control. Tesla has sort of engaged in this practice. Think of the red Tesla Roadster that Musk's other company, SpaceX, put into orbit in 2018. Or, more recently, of astronauts headed for the International Space Station in a SpaceX capsule getting a ride to their rocket in a Tesla Model X.

A Tesla shareholder intends to agitate at the company's annual meeting next month for more old-school advertising, perhaps to spur demand during the coronavirus pandemic recovery. Musk isn't likely to be interested in entertaining the idea.

In the meantime, here are 10 times when Musk proved that ads are pointless for Tesla:

Musk sends his personal, red Tesla Roadster to the red planet.YouTube / SpaceX

The marketing stunt to end all marketing stunts. General Motors might spend billions convincing people to buy Chevys, the company doesn't have a sibling rocket concern that can send Chevys into orbit.

The Falcon Heavy rocket that SpaceX launched in 2018 required a dummy payload, and Musk decided that a Tesla vehicle would be ideal. His very own red original Roadster, in fact.

The car, piloted by a space-suited "Starman," was released once the launch cleared Earth's gravity well, to the strains of David Bowie, with the words "Don't Panic" displayed on the car's infotainment screen, a reference to Douglas Adams' book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a Musk favorite. 



Tesla designs ventilators to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.Tesla/Screenshot via YouTube

Ford and General Motors teamed up with, respectively, GE Healthcare and a ventilators maker called Ventec soon after concerns emerged that an upswelling in COVID-19 patience would exhaust thee limited US supply of ventilators. 

Tesla also jumped into the fray, with engineers repurposing auto parts to produce a prototype ventilators that could be quickly manufactured.



Boring Company hats, raising $1 million for Musk's tunneling side project.Business Insider/Dave Smith

Musk got stuck in Los Angeles traffic a few years back and was so incensed that he started a tunneling concern, the Boring Company, to dig tunnels under congested freeways to speed up transit. 

The company raised a cool million in 2018 by selling hats. Later, it raised more by selling flamethrowers.

None of this was directly about Tesla, but it continued to brand Musk as a daring, problem-solving, irreverent innovator.



Tesla's market capitalization booms relative to the competition.Andy Kiersz/Business Insider

Tesla's best free advertising comes from Wall Street and investors' obsession with the upstart automaker's growth story. Every single trading day is potentially a Tesla promotion.

With a market cap of $150 billion, Tesla is now financially larger than GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles combined.

 



Musk dates Grimes, and later they have a baby together and give it an unusual name.Neilson Barnard/Getty

Musk is a weird sort of geek celebrity, but he has been married (twice) to actress Talulah Riley, and more recently he's made headlines for his relationship with musician Grimes. The couple welcomed a son, named "X Æ A-12," in May, and the birth was widely covered.

All the while, Tesla was restarting its operations in China after a coronavirus shutdown and SpaceX was readying the first launch of astronauts to the International Space Station from American soil since the end of the Space Shuttle program.

Musk was too busy to think about advertising, so he just made news himself.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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