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However I'm all for "marketing", which is different to "advertising" because it has an element of cleverness and invention, and does not rely on saturation.
Marketing is a surgical guided missile strike, advertising is saturation bombing.
Actually, perhaps a trifle pedantically Marketing consists of :
Product
Positioning
Promotion and
Price
Those were developed by E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960:
Basic Marketing A Managerial Approach Fourth Edition
I give the reference since numerous people on this thread do not actually understand these details.
Tesla and Elon DO understand.
Positioning and Promotion have both changed dramatically during the last two decades, primarily due to the internet, first, then Social Media and e-commerce. Promotion, by the way, includes advertising, social media participation, as well as the Holy Grail of Promotion, the elusive and prized Word-of-Mouth. That WoM includes social media activity by customers (say, TMC, Tesla owners clubs, Twitter and Facebook groups)
Modern marketers rarely use either print or broadcast advertising. Tesla did not originate that, but they may be the only large auto manufacturer or solar and battery supplier to completely avoid such waste.
Equally, most prominently Tesla encourages Tesla enthusiast groups which are more active and involved, even to agitating for Tesla-friendly legislation, than any other even remotely comparable group.
Today advertising, in any form but especially digital, is very expensive. Precise targeting is the reason, making cost-per-reach (the standard metric) irrelevant. cost-per-sale is the only relevant metric.
Tesla auto competitors average above 15% of sales in the Promotion category alone and that excludes dealer-paid and the dealer markup. That 15% varies dramatically from season to season and other factors. Overall that has tended to be fairly stable over time but the categories have changed.
Bluntly, folks, despite the enthusiasm of some of us for Tesla to begin advertising or paid-promotion t5aht would very likely destroy the Tesla advantages.
Anybody who doubts the Tesla ability to scale their approach should take a quick look at Tesla China or anything they sell anywhere. All of us are the promotional team and our numbers are growing worldwide.
FWIW, There are active groups in many countries, such as Russia and Brasil, where Tesla is not sold, that actively import grey-market Teslas. In those countries and many others Tesla will have ready buyers lined up just as soon as they can make enough product to begin selling to them. Does Tesla need advertising in any form at all. NO!!!
