Home stretch, people! Your time of affliction via exposure to weak Dad Jokes is almost over. (I can hear cheering outside my window…)
Today we turn to That Company, Tesla, and its (ok, his) remarkable ability to promote its (ok, his) products without spending on advertising. Tesla’s long-standing aversion to ad spend is well known, though it has eroded in recent months, as the firm has begun to shell out for online ads and even selected physical advertisements (yours truly saw a Tesla billboard, of all things, in Iceland; and there have been sightings of video-screen ads in places like Haneda Airport in Tokyo).1
The firm has always used social media and other essentially free means to get the word out about its cars, including of course word-of-mouth recommendations by Tesla owners who would not consider it an insult to be called fanatics. Tesla is also very aware that the media generally, drawn to the company and its mercurial Technoking like moths to a flame, will cover in depth literally anything the company does, from launching handy not-flamethrowers2 to selling branded tequila. Also, yes, cars.
So now we come to that off offspring of a cheese grater, a doorstop, and a DeLorean, the Cybertruck. This represents an excellent example of what we are talking about, in that the free publicity, or advertising, from media coverage of this… truck?…. has been off any chart one can imagine. Or has it? Thanks to the clever people at the Financial Times, we do have a chart!
Being financial types, they of course created a ratio, of the number of Cybertruck news stories (counted by Factiva) divided by Morgan Stanley’s estimate of Cybertruck deliveries in 2023. You can agree or disagree with MS’s forecast, but if you go along for now, you can see that Tesla has reaped over 200 free press stories about its newest product per truck, without as far as I know spending a cent.
I am writing this in my usual sma**-a** tone, but the achievement is actually seriously impressive. In effect, Tesla has managed to ensure that virtually everyone who might conceivably be in the market for this … vehicle? … knows all about it long before it launches at scale.
One can say many things about Mr. Musk, but hats off to him in this regard: the man is probably the most brilliant single marketer the automotive industry has ever seen3.
For better or worse.
Tomorrow is the tenth and final day of this series. I can hear the sighs of relief from here. In the Christmas entry I take an immature self-congratulatory victory lap. You don’t want to miss it!
Dad Joke of the day: “My grandmother, for her health, started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. [ wait… ] She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is.”
It is very ironic that the person who runs Tesla, which has been averse to spending on advertising, also runs X, which has been very dependent on spending by advertisers. Advertising for thee but not for me, I guess. If we’re being mildly charitable about this (it is the holiday season, yes?), remember that F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
Yes, this is from the separate but related Boring Company, I know. But give me a break, how often do I get to write “flamethrower” in a blog post?