It was late 2019, and Tesla had just steered through a rough
patch of production hell, executive departures and self-inflicted crises.
Dissolving the PR department was a risky move for a company that relied on
media coverage as a primary driver of sales leads and thumbed its nose at
traditional advertising.
It worked out fine for Tesla shareholders, at least for a
time. The company opened its massive plant in Shanghai, launched the Model Y
and meme stocked its way to a more than $1 trillion valuation. Its CEO became
the richest man on the planet.
Then, Musk offered $44 billion to Twitter just as the
Federal Reserve was beginning to pull away the punch bowl. Musk sold billions
of dollars worth of Tesla stock to help fund the purchase, and the carmaker’s
shares plunged 65% in 2022.
Many Tesla shareholders understandably haven’t been big fans
of the Twitter deal, and some have even called for Musk to revive the
carmaker’s PR department. Instead, Tesla has been stepping up its activity on
Twitter.
The @Tesla account is still nowhere near as prolific as
@elonmusk, but the pickup is conspicuous. Some posts even look an awful lot
like the 30-second car commercials Musk used to regard as wastes of time and
resources that would be better spent on improving product.
Rather than put out a press release or blog post on taking
over the former home of HP and turning the site into its global engineering
headquarters, Tesla posted a tweet last month giving the world an hour’s notice
that Musk and Governor Gavin Newsom would be making an announcement. Tesla then
broadcast the remarks on Twitter, posted job openings and streamed the opening
party.
Stepping up Tesla’s presence on Twitter could play a small
part in driving the engagement Musk will need to turn the latter business
around. He said last week that Twitter may avoid burning cash next quarter,
which would be a welcome development for Tesla shareholders who won’t want him
selling any more stock in the carmaker to keep his debt-laden social media
company afloat.
But stepping up its game on Twitter hasn’t been a panacea
for Tesla’s communications. The carmaker released few details about the
California engineering headquarters, and some news outlets got the nuance
wrong. Tesla never moved its engineering base out of Golden State and wasn’t
moving its global headquarters back from Texas. A day after its announcement,
Tesla sent a clarifying tweet.
In a sage response to investors concerned about the bench
behind Musk, Tesla put 16 executives on stage alongside him at its recent
investor day. But after months of consternation about his level of focus on
Tesla, a skilled team of PR people may have advised Musk against tweeting about
the war in Ukraine and Keith Olbermann during the almost four-hour affair.
Communications professionals might also have warned that
staging such an event without any new models might be a bit of a letdown.
More than two weeks since investor day, Tesla fans are still
waiting on the detailed white paper laying out the calculations and assumptions
behind its roadmap for transitioning Earth to sustainable energy. If the last
few months is any guide, they’ll know where to find it. -Bloomberg
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