Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Maybe Tesla should have an advertising budget...

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.

ABCTG

Member
Supporting Member
Apr 8, 2017
336
3,120
3RFTS
Tesla is proud of the fact that they have a zero $ advertising budget and 400,000 preorders, and rightly so.

Maybe Tesla doesn't need to advertise, and maybe they never will. However, what would advertising do for Tesla?

More specifically what would advertising on the mainstream press do for Tesla?

Who spends a lot of money on advertising? The auto industry?

If Ford buys advertising from a newspaper, does that newspaper care if Ford lives or dies? Yes, most likely, and most likely they aren't going to be too negative about Ford.

If Tesla doesn't buy any advertising from that newspaper, does that newspaper care if Tesla lives or dies? No, not really.

So, if Tesla buys advertising, they would then be a customer of the media, they would be giving the media money, and then maybe there would be a decrease in the amount of negative press.

The media currently has no financial interest in whether Tesla succeeds or not.

So, Tesla could have an advertising budget and buy space on all the main media outlets. It wouldn't even have to be clever or fancy, they could just post a picture of the Tesla logo.
 
That's not how it works.

Maybe that works for politicians, but not for legitimate media outlets. Most media outlets actually care more about viewership, eyeballs and impressions, so they can display and sell more ads.

If they run an anti-Tesla story, it's not because Tesla isn't an advertiser, it's because it will generate more ad impressions for a desired demographic. Same thing goes for a pro-Tesla story. It's just at this point, anti-Tesla stories are more sensationalistic ("A TESLA IS ON FIRE!!!") so it's basically clickbait to sell more ads. That's just how the news is. If Tesla does something fantastic that will generate more ad impressions, they would publish those stories, too.

If a media outlet choose not to publish a pro-Tesla story because Tesla isn't an advertisers, some of their competitors will publish those stories, which would pull viewership and impressions away from the first media outlet, lowering their viewership and ad revenue.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mongo and Chuq