Hours after the reports of Tesla, Inc. TSLA firing his marketing team in the US, CEO Elon Musk affirmed the ads made by the team failed to impress him.
What happened: The CEO agreed with user X and Tesla enthusiast who said that the ads made by the team were rather bland and wrote: “Exactly. The adverts were too generic – they could have been any car.”
Musk’s comment comes on the heels of a Bloomberg report that the electric vehicle giant removed its newly formed marketing team as part of the company-wide 10% layoff announced last week. The report notes that the entire team in the United States, including the senior manager Alex Ingramthey were eliminated.
Trial and error: Musk first expressed a willingness to try traditional advertising less than a year ago, in May 2023. Until then, the company boasted that it had spent nearly with no money for advertising, but became popular solely through word of mouth.
Since then, Tesla has attempted to advertise on several platforms, including Youtube, Xand even Meta Platforms’ InstagramAND Facebook despite Musk’s past criticism of them.
However, in January, Tesla executives made it clear during its fourth-quarter earnings call that while the lack of awareness had an impact on EV adoption, the company would not spend too much on advertising and marketing but would it would instead spend in areas and geographies where the company has a low market. shares like Japan.
Analyst Take: Not all Tesla analysts are in favor of this low advertising investment strategy. The Future Fund Managing partner Gary Black He has often criticized Tesla’s attempts to boost sales through price cuts that weigh heavily on the company’s margins. Black recommends advertising instead.
Black also reiterated Monday that educating owners of combustion engine vehicles about the benefits of electric vehicles through advertising is “absolutely necessary” to drive sales. “Anyone can cut prices. It is a blunt and inefficient tool,” Black added.
Anti-Tesla Ad: While Musk has avoided publicity, anti-Tesla crusaders have gone all out.
The Alba projectfounded by the tech billionaire Dan O’Dowdran two ads during the Super Bowl championship earlier this year alleging that Tesla had failed to act despite the group reporting multiple concerns about the safety of its fully autonomous driver-assist software (FSD) and urging the boycott of the company.
“When you buy a new Tesla you are funding and enabling Elon Musk to put a dangerous, unfinished product on our public roads,” O’Dowd he said in a statement at the time.
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