You don't think a 7.5% increase in "unfavorable" rating is signficant?
Or a 5% decrease in "favorable" rating?
Going from 30% to 25% favorable rating is a 17% drop in the number of people who like your brand.
For some unfathomable reason many people have unquestioned faith in the accuracy and methodology of brand ratings, and even more when viewing metrics such as 'intention to buy'. Along with the vaunted 'unaided recall' core metric these all have several major problems.
-first, selection bias. During the last two decades every polling category from political voting intentions to favorability ratings and intentions has suffered large declines in correlation to actual observed behavior. More and more people decline to respond to surveys and those who do are increasingly likely to represent outliers.
-second, survey design flaws. As more surveys are conducted by people who have no background or qualifications in survey design and control, sampling errors grow even more than they already have due to selection bias because there is so little effort to design surveys to limit the errors.
Favorability ratings are immensely popular for the same reasons that political polls are so popular. Quoting some poll always is tittilating. Often they really have minimal value.
In our present TMC investor dilemmas many of us are compelled to evaluate personal behavior of a given CEO because if we listen to neighbors and ask if they've changed their view due to an obnoxious post somewhere, surprise!, they've often say they have done that. Such events are the third bane of survey research, Confirmation Bias. Here on TMC the purveyors of confirmation bias often become banished to ply their rumors elsewhere.
I decided to post this three part description because we are at great risk in this thread of losing sight of actual facts. In the present day ephemeral 24 hour news cycle we seek stimulation continuously. After the 24 hour continuous steaming news was invited by Ted Turner the world has devolved towards continuous exacerbation of controversy. We have, in this thread, fallen victim to that habit. Otherwise intelligent people are preoccupied with the latest tweet, even those that have a half-life of a few minutes.
If we are to be useful to each other we need to work hard to 'sort the wheat from the chaff'. We need to learn what data is real, what is imaginary and what is real but irrelevant. Gratuitous political commentary, personal revulsion or admiration of a given CEO is really not very helpful.
Actual business decisions and actual facts are always helpful. Actual buyer and driver performance is also relevant, as is everything financially demonstrated.
History is plentifully supplied with highly accomplished people who were deeply flawed. After all, as people become more and more successful their flaws become more visible. In my own life I have been lucky enough to meet and deal with a large number of highly accomplished people. I have tried to recall one such person who displayed conventionally conforming behavior. I cannot find one. We all here are involved deeply with one such individual.
Please stop trying to find relevance in odd behavior that is not directly tied to performance of our investments in TSLA. Please stop quoting ill-designed surveys, polls and anecdotes all of which exacerbate perceived risks.
We have many real risks, real opportunities and factual issues. Those are hard work to find, understand and explain. For me personally, I benefit enormously when someone corrects me when I make a factual error. Several people regularly do that; I owe them a debt of gratitude because that helps me learn. I hope we can enhance the exchange of solid information exchange, from which we can learn. That is why I've been here since 2014.
