Tesla

For this week's blog, I've chosen Tesla. I personally love this company. They are working very hard to free the world from the grips of the oil and coal companies, making it a better place for all of us. Providing clean power through solar cells, cars, and trucks that drive fast and only use battery, at an affordable price is their value proposition. While the cars and trucks are still quite expensive, the price will drop relatively when compared with the average increase in costs for gasoline powered vehicles. Elon Musk is my personal hero, both because of what his companies do and represent, and because he's a total maniac.
There's never a shortage of people talking about Tesla. One big thing people are talking about is Tesla's financials in the first quarter.

The first post is in regards to those who short sell Tesla's stock, which is effectively betting the company will lose money. As you can see from the second post, the first quarter is never the best quarter for an auto company, yet, while other car companies are reporting huge losses, Tesla has remained profitable. They, like everybody else where forced to shut down plants, which saves on variable costs, but fixed costs still have to be paid, and that means Tesla is making money while producing next to nothing. Another reason to love this company, that's just good business right there. 

Other tweeters are more focused on Elon, who has been a major critic of lockdown policy. 

Though he hurts himself by having really bad communication skills, his opinion is shared by many. He isn't getting retweeted due likely to the bad typing. While I agree that we need to be tactful in reopening the community, what this poster fails to take into account is that Musk is a man of the people. All his companies, and their efforts are directed at the betterment of the human race, he cares for people deeply, and right now he has thousands of workers sitting at home not getting paid. Josh should be so lucky to have a boss who cares this much one day. 

And still others are ready at the defense, like myself  and Ross Gerber.

With the spread of the virus at a standstill in the area around the plant, it makes sense for a guy who cares about people to get a little antsy when it comes to the possibility of getting his people back to work. 

Right now, Tesla is fighting to market is solar power roofs. This is where Tesla truly stands apart from the crowd. According to an article in Forbes, Tesla spends $0 on social advertising. They do have car commercials, but their online presence is purely organic. Musk himself is a very active Twitter user, as is the company. Their interaction with the public are focused on being part of the conversation. This is something that has come up repeatedly in our reading, be organic. By never marketing on social media, they are in fact marketing themselves as people, who make cool cars, rather than a company that makes cars. 

The don't re-tweet the good things people say about them, so no birdiebragging here. They talk about their value proposition, they products they are working on, even global warming, you'll get jabbed constantly, but you will never see a right hook. This boils the marketing challenge to this: be the best company you can be, so people want to talk and interact with you without forcing adds down their throat, and maybe have a crazy, unhinged genius calling the shots. 

Tesla like to interact directly with its customers through social media. Although a search through the pages doesn't reveal the regular interaction the Forbes article would lead you to believe. They post things in a manor that is organic to the social media they are using. That is where it ends. Pick any given post, there is a conversation going on around that post. Good and bad posts on every post, but nothing from Tesla beyond the initial post. If I were in charge, I would definitely change that. With no money spent on advertising online, its even more important for Tesla to take an active roll in the conversations about them. They spent the time to make the pages, why not take an active roll on them?

This assignment taught me it's possible to be hugely popular by just talking to people. Life doesn't have to be an advertisement if you have a cool product and just interact with people in a way they find interesting.