It's not a matter of being cool. It's a matter of going next-level with "no comment."
Tesla has some bad PR, the press can't get anything out of Tesla so the story is dead out the door, and Telsa's PR team comes up with some stupid stunt to get social media trending on the stunt...problem solved. "Oh, you see that thing about Tesla?" is about their cars blinking their headlights to Christmas music, and not, say, the feds ramping up their investigation into Teslas slamming into roadside emergency vehicles.
Standard corporate "disaster management" is essentially "hide everyone, don't say a fucking word, wait to get out of the news cycle."
They do have a way of creating distractions to bury the stories that they don't like. The Cyberwhistle was launched just around the time of the whistle blower stories that were coming out. Kind of smart and I did not realize the connection until after a while.
> Standard corporate "disaster management" is essentially "hide everyone, don't say a fucking word, wait to get out of the news cycle."
Usually, they throw in a lightweight apology. Saying something like: "we deeply regret the experience this particular customer had."
Before they go to "no comment".
I guess Elon innovated by simply saving "apology" part :)
Elon is clearly on some galactic brain game theory with this move because, despite firing all his PR people, people like you still think they have a PR department and not only that but their PR department runs the entire company and their product / software update release cycle! And they're apparently proactive enough to have the right card to pull for any given corporate disaster they may find themselves in!
Why pay for a PR department when people still think you have one even without one?
0.02 - I don't think it's great that Tesla got rid of their media relations department, but I also don't think that they have people cracking the whip on holiday update deadlines so they can cover up NHTSA investigations or whatever. You don't get cool on social media by forcing it. Now, the Cyberwhistle is a different story...
Tesla has some bad PR, the press can't get anything out of Tesla so the story is dead out the door, and Telsa's PR team comes up with some stupid stunt to get social media trending on the stunt...problem solved. "Oh, you see that thing about Tesla?" is about their cars blinking their headlights to Christmas music, and not, say, the feds ramping up their investigation into Teslas slamming into roadside emergency vehicles.
Standard corporate "disaster management" is essentially "hide everyone, don't say a fucking word, wait to get out of the news cycle."