Tesla is finally running TV/streaming ads, but they are not to sell electric cars. They are to promote a vote for Tesla shareholders to approve Elon Musk’s next compensation package worth up to $1 trillion.
As a company, under Elon Musk’s leadership, Tesla has famously been against advertising. The CEO is even on the record saying that he “hates advertising” and that “other companies spend money on advertising and manipulating public opinion, Tesla focuses on the product.”
However, that was before he acquired Twitter, now X, which relies heavily on advertising.
After that, he started to push Tesla to do some advertising, but the company quickly stopped or greatly reduced its advertising efforts.
Last month, we reported that Tesla’s advertising effort picked back up with ads to encourage Tesla shareholders to vote for Musk’s new unprecedented CEO compensation package worth up to $1 trillion.
The renewed advertising effort was limited to Google and social media ads or sponsored posts, which was also the case in Tesla’s previously mentioned advertising efforts.
Now, Tesla is even running TV-like ads on streaming services. Paramount+ watchers were surprised to see this ad running on the streaming service this week:
This is one of the very first TV-style video ads that Tesla is paying to air, but it is not to sell EVs.
While the automaker is struggling to sell its existing vehicles, the ad exclusively features future products that are not yet available for sale, and it serves only to ask shareholders to vote in accordance with the board’s recommendation at the upcoming shareholders’ meeting.
Electrek’s Take
It’s funny because I was talking to a friend of mine who came back on a long rural road trip with his Cybertruck last week.
He was saying that he was surprised how many people in rural areas not only didn’t know about the Cybertruck, but they didn’t even know much about Tesla. Yet, they were curious about it and electric vehicles in general.
We were discussing how these people are not as active on social media, and that Tesla would greatly benefit from advertising its vehicles in more traditional channels, such as TV/streaming ads, with clear messaging that relates to them, such as the cost of ownership and utility.
I joked that Tesla will do TV ads about Elon’s compensation plan before they do about their EVs. It literally took less than a week for Tesla to prove me right.
There is just no reasonable justification for this. It’s as simple as Elon is bigger than Tesla, a company of 100,000+ people.
You can’t make a viable argument against the fact that this would be money better spent advertising Tesla’s available cars when the company is currently operating its production lines at 60% capacity and the compensation package would be better spent on tens of thousands of full-time employees whose contribution to Tesla is much greater than Elon’s at this point.
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