What Musk actually says is that they don't do advertisement and that case by the comment definition of 'paying somebody to run ads'. As far as I know, please provide sources if you know otherwise, that Musk or Tesla said 'we don't have a PR department'.
Rather the media around Tesla stopped getting answers for requests and some of the personal contacts from inside Tesla that they had left the company. This lead the media concluding that Tesla had fired its PR department. Or at least those people that responded to media requests. We know that some people that were part of that moved to other position inside Tesla.
Tesla always had events and produced various kinds of media that they put out on their own channel. They clearly have a marketing or media team of some kind. The also clearly have people preparing communication for governments and shareholders, so they do have some kind of PR department, even if they internally don't call it that and those people work inside other departments.
I think you are mixing up what Musk claims and what media companies say about Tesla.
- PR - handling traditional and perhaps social media channels like TV, journals, magazines etc answer press questions, arrange interviews , make sure journalists covering them have access, in smaller orgs get journalist to cover them.
- media planning - figures out where to place advertisements and when and may handle also the buy operations . Digital is in-house in large orgs, but for traditional media like print it is external[1]
- creative agencies usually external and produce advertising content like Super Bowl ads to boring flyers
- Marcom - Marketing communications usually is responsible for Corporate communication and content that is not advertising stuff like this video.
- few other like lobbying ,crisis control etc may work in the same group or work with legal or other depts
Tesla seems to have other three depts in some form, they did say they fire PR team and stopped engaging with traditional press
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[1] this still requires relationship building unlike digital as there is no targeting , limited inches airtime available and getting the slots you want can be tricky everyone wants best prime time /first page etc for their campaigns, it is not always top price sale. As slots are sold in complex packages clubbed with less attractive media properties that don’t sell as well with the attractive ones you do want to buy .
This is why we have media groups they are more efficient, as they can better monetize properties by clubbing them in sales and are able to acquire independent publications/channels to make more money than they were making on their own.
> Musk or Tesla said 'we don't have a PR department'.
From an article titled "Elon Musk says no to a new Tesla PR department, doesn’t believe ‘manipulating public opinion’"[1]:
> Elon Musk rejected the idea of Tesla going back to having a PR department, and his reasoning behind it is quite revealing: He doesn’t believe in “manipulating public opinion.”
Other companies spend money on advertising & manipulating public opinion, Tesla focuses on the product.
I trust the people.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2021
That's the actual quote and the question was from a media member who used to have a lot of contact with the PR team and was referring to people responding to requests from him. Fred knows very well that Tesla still has a marketing team in general.
I think most peoples' definition is clearly about "push-based" paid advertising, rather than "pull-based" marketing videos that they don't pay any platform to promote.
I for one, am grateful that a company is showing the power of organic marketing like that, as opposed to constantly having to see Doritos ads injected into my friends' Instagram stories on iOS. (jk, I only use desktop Firefox w/ uBlock now)
> I think most peoples' definition is clearly about "push-based" paid advertising
That's got nothing to do with it. All that's going on here is that people have bought into a false narrative that Tesla doesn't do advertising. And instead of recognizing it as false they desperately defend the falsehood to avoid feeling foolish.
Making the claim that something which is plainly an ad is not an ad by way of silly semantics is farcical.
You’re the one obsessed with a word. Tesla markets. They have marketing. They made marketing videos. They do not advertise. They do not have commercials, or buy ad space in newspapers or magazines, buy space on billboards, or banner ads, use Facebook’s targeted ad campaigns, or any other form of advertising.
This video is promotional marketing. It is not advertising. Those are two different things. You can die on that hill if you want to, but it’s fucking weird. Tesla makes some people go completely batshit insane, and I do not get it. At all.
Suck my fat hog, cunt. None of those are ads. They are promotional marketing. I’m sorry you are so possessed by this need to hate and ridicule, but Tesla doesn’t advertise. That does not mean they do not promote their product. But — and here is what you are too willfully stupid to understand — advertising and marketing are not the same thing. Post all the YouTube links you want. Unless one of those is an ad that shows up before other videos on YT, it’s not an ad. It’s promotional marketing.
It's the same kind of radicalization you see with QAnon adherents. The more the objective reality of the world contradicts their beliefs, the more strongly they cling to those beliefs.
Unlike you, I don’t give two shits about Tesla. We could put Musk, Bezos, Putin, and a random Saudi prince in a line and shoot them all, execution style, and I would not give a fuck.
What I do care about is truth. I worship truth. It is my god. And you are a liar. You have an axe to grind against Tesla, and will pursue it in bad faith, by which I mean regardless of what facts are presented to you.
Tesla does not advertise. This is a truth. You are obsessed with Tesla. This is also a truth. But know what? You’re my project. I’m a zealot when it comes to the truth. It is, as I mentioned, my God. I want to do my holy duty. I want to fight some fuck stick on the Internet. So please continue to bring it on. Continue to use your rhetorical tricks, shift blame, and all the other tiresome tactics that trolls like you resort to.
Tesla does not advertise. They promote their products, but not through advertisements.
By the way: Ford uses WPP as their ad agency. Toyota uses Saatchi & Saatchi. Target uses Merkle.
Which advertising agency does Tesla use? For these advertisements you swear exist somewhere?
About what? What evidence is not being considered?
Or… maybe my zealotry is for objectivity. To not using language as a tool to achieve predetermined outcomes.
So, I noticed you didn’t answer the Question about which ad agency it is Tesla uses. Is this the point where you just abandon all pretense, and avoid having a discussion? Instead choosing to evolve into ad hominem and other rhetorical tricks? That’s usually the pattern here, right. The discussion goes into a direction that you can no longer a fan, so instead of admitting any kind of change of opinion based upon new information - like people who are discussing things in good faith do — they simply resort to short quips that divert from the real conversation and allow them to have the final word.
> So, I noticed you didn’t answer the Question about which ad agency it is Tesla uses.
You're only noticing my boredom. Just try to think logically. Your claim is that Tesla can make its own cars but it cannot make its own ads?
> avoid having a discussion?
There is no discussion. There is only your inability to see the obvious.
Tesla's advertising has worked well on you. You've been trained in what to parrot and you parrot it desperately and for free. You like to think of yourself as sophisticated but in reality Tesla's manipulation of you is total. You can't see the obvious even when it's right in front of you.
- What ad agency does Tesla use?
- what networks have they advertised on?
- Multiple people in this thread have pointed out to you the difference between advertising and marketing. Do you still claim they are one and the same?
Finally:
- How to you live with yourself? Don’t you ever get tired of, you know, being you?
My reply had nothing to do with Tesla. If a definition says “ad” is basically any piece of text on the internet, the definition is wrong. That seems uncontroversial.
I'm no Tesla fan, but I maintain that the standard understanding of an "advertisement" implies paid. Just because a company puts something out there into the world doesn't make it an advertisement. (Things like classified job posting "ads" notwithstanding.)
Is that kind of hostile/dismissive language actually necessary or helpful do you think? What if instead we investigate the disagreement in good faith?
One of the two definitions of an "advertisement" from Webster was quoted. The other is this:
> the act or process of advertising something
Which links to "advertising":
> the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcements
Emphasis mine. So perhaps we have some middle ground here. I would argue that this is the advertising definition we're talking about when we're discussing whether something is an "advertisement", not the sort of public event or job posting, commonly referred to as a "classified ad", referred to by the other definition. Maybe that's where we disagree. Or maybe it's the salience of this "especially by paid announcements". In my experience, that is the general understanding of the term: advertisements are generally paid. But I acknowledge that it says "especially by", not "only by", so some room for interpretation is left.
So, given all that, I figure if you want to label this an ad, that's reasonable. What I find less reasonable is declaring anyone who disagrees to be objectively wrong, and then using dismissive language like the above to try and win an unnecessary argument.
No, you are objectively wrong. It's advertising, straight up and down.
The lengths you're going to to defend an obvious lie are strange. That's the odd psychology of it where you're more willing to keep going down the rabbit hole than you are to simply admit you're wrong.
It works wonderfully, too. Look how many people in this thread are just now realizing how incredibly automated manufacturing has become; they think Tesla invented all this.
