﻿Why tesla doesn’t advertise Many car companies and luxury car brands
like audi can’t survive without running ads and commercials for their merchandise, buying prime
media placement for billboards, TV spots, magazine spreads and more. However, Tesla intends to take
a different path. Moreover, tesla has a huge social media following and it’s CEO Elon Musk,
isn’t shy of taking full advantage of this. His twitter profile has over 50 million followers,
more than the following of the combined top 5 car franchises in the world GeneralMotors.
Most of tesla’s product launches rack in millions of views on their youtube channel.
Elon takes this media advantage tesla has very seriously, he even went as far as hiring
a professional meme maker to head their social media communications team. Tesla has never ran
a paid ad campaign. Instead, the company relies on word of mouth aka free advertising generated
by their car’s reputation and occasional stunts. As far as organic buzz goes, tesla is undeniably
killing the game. They have the strongest organic social media engagement among car brands,
despite spending literally $0 dollars on social media campaigns and with elon’s waky tweets
included, he’s practically a walking advertisement the tesla brand. Tesla definitely benefits from
having a savvy media friendly CEO like Elon Musk. He tweet even tweet in 2019 saying “ tesla does
not advertise or pay for endorsements. Instead, we use that money to make the product great”.
It’s a fair argument and one that other brands have certainly made before.
however, as the brand and the market place has evolved with more and more companies spending
billions of dollars on ads and commercials. Companies like GeneralMotors spending $2.7
billion dollars on ads in 2020, which was actually down from 2019 due to the covid pandemic, it might
be time for tesla to reconsider splurging a bit on ads and commercials. I’m afraid tesla’s word for
mouth just won’t cut it, because tesla can still invest in advertising whilst building quality cars
and building it’s brand on social media, similar auto brands tend to make back the money that they
invest in advertising campaigns. But without advertising, it’s hard to grow and maintain a
brand without substantial organic buzz on social media. Word of mouth alone may have worked for
tesla in the past. But tesla’s anti advertising strategy hasn’t been treating them well lately,
the brand saw a 31% drop in sales during the first quarter of 2019. That’s the biggest quarterly drop
in sales in the history of tesla as a company and tesla isn’t the only electric company to
pay attention to anymore, though they are the baddest dogs on the turf, I would put any of the
underdogs to the side lines if I were you. Other brands are starting to produce electric cars,
with the advertising budgets to back them up. When it comes to advertising, tesla has a lot
to offer and this amounts in wasted potential, among the onslaught of boring, repetitive car ads,
Tesla has a chance to stand out with unique brand voice and unique benefits other brand wouldn’t
dream of having. How many other cars let you prank your friends with a “fart button”? in addition to
bringing in sales, advertising could be a way for tesla to futher develop their brand voice
and appeal to an even wider range of customers. A common theme among brands that don’t advertise
is that they tend to think advertising weakens their brand appeal, it’s a point of pride to
be a brand that doesn’t need to advertise to get customers interested in their products. However,
these brands should realise what they can gain by introducing advertising campaigns into their
marketing mix. Advertising is not only a way to get customers engaged in your brand and increase
short term revenue, it’s also smart investment in long term revenue and brand recognition.
I think tesla is definitely going to lose In the long run. However I won’t underestimate elon’s
genius either. Let us know what you think about tesla short and long term future in the comments.
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