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Elon Musk: "Maybe We Should Advertise"

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This afternoon, Sawyer Merritt shared a snippet of Tesla Owners SV's recent interview with Elon Musk on Twitter, where Elon stated that:

"There's an argument for maybe we should advertise. The tradition media won't run hit-pieces about automotive because automotive is one of the biggest, if not the biggest advertiser in their paper. Tesla's basically like free game, whereas it's safe to say that if they write a negative piece about General Motors right next to a GM ad, GM marketing exec is going to call them up and ask, "um, why did you do that?" They know who's paying their salary.

So maybe we should advertise. It doesn't feel right, but maybe that's what we should do. In the grand scheme of things, is it actually causing us to sell less cars? Doesn't seem to be. So then why should we care?"


According to Elon, the constant amount of negative hit pieces on the news actually boosted sales in 2017 to 2019.

"Frankly, a bunch of the pieces trashing Tesla, especially in 2017-2019, the press was a nonstop hate stream. . . . And our sales went up!"


Elon has teased advertising before, for example, in this tweet a year ago (provided by @Buckminster):


In 2022, Tesla's continued to grow rapidly, and it's unlikely this exponential growth will stop any time soon, so it's safe to say they won't need to advertise unless it's to promote their vehicles' lesser known features and not necessarily because they need to stop negative press.

Though it would be amazing if we could stop seeing news threads talking about how "unsafe" Teslas and EVs are, every week of the year.

Screen Shot 2022-06-22 at 3.04.36 PM.png

(Source: lex fridman, CC BY-SA 4.0 <Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International — CC BY-SA 4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
(TMC Staff: Image added for use in Blog feed.)
 
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To advertise, it seems to me like you are actually giving in to bribery.

It rewards the hate-filled biased journalists with advertising revenue.
It bolsters publications that have previously treated Tesla unfairly.

I hope Elon maintains his current zero-advertising position.
he will not advertise.........it's just more free advertising by saying he might advertise.....he's not a dumb dude, he knows how to work the media to his advantage. Why advertise when clearly they don't need to, is the goal to have a 5 yr waiting list instead of a 2 yrs waiting list. Advertising would only show desperation and weakness and have a negative effect
 
He might need to advertise to help rebuild Tesla brand after this whole Twitter fiasco.
100%.

Advertisement seems the shortcut in rebuilding a half dead Tesla.
The Tom Bradyc- channel stuff with Hertz worked pretty cool.

Tesla could easily outpace any other brand. As long as they are cool, but the coolness wears off each day Elon behaves like a right wing alien.
 
it could be beneficial to advertise, but not in the way typical advertisements are done. they should be based around awareness of the product or features that most people know about.

Haven't spoken to someone unaware of the details who knew about brake hold, auto unlock/lock, phone key, etc...

How about advertising that you're the leader on efficiency and charging. I'd marginally support it.