What Tesla Taught Me About Advertising
About design as marketing, the meaning of advertising & mad genius
The new year starts with a bang full of symbolism as a Tesla Cybertruck explodes in front of Trump Tower.
Is it a sign of things to come? Of two explosive egos colliding in a sea of flames?
I dunno, I don’t believe in signs.
But I believe in signaling and storytelling, so here’s what Tesla taught me about advertising.
The Mad Genius
Tesla famously “don’t advertise”. Or so they claim.
I call humbug!
Because that’s only true if you reduce advertising to paid media.
In 2018, Tesla shot an actual car into space for no other reason than to get attention.
What’s that, if not a big old ad?
Of course, Tesla doesn’t buy ad space on TV or have coupons in magazines because almost no one does. It’s the 21st century! Could we update the definition of advertising already?
Tesla doesn’t run advertisements.
But they do plenty of advertising.
Advertising is any costly gesture that earns attention and reputation. It’s storytelling and storydoing. Media is everywhere if your actions tell stories worth sharing.
In fact, storydoing has almost become a buzzword because it’s the consequence of another buzzword, the much-abused authenticity.
Consumers got sick of brands claiming to be authentic and finally said “prove it”.
That’s why advertising can no longer look like advertising.
Storydoing is experience design first and media second:
First, find a problem to solve.
Then, if your solution is interesting enough, the media will take care of itself.
Tesla has proved this in both strategy, experience, and product design.
Scarcity as Positioning
Even before they made a car, Tesla positioned themselves as the very elite of the yet non-existent EV market; a premium electric vehicle for only the most radical futurists. They did it with pricing and waiting lists that no rational economist would have thought possible.
Remember, Tesla was founded only one year after psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics. Tesla was among the very earliest adopters of behavioral economics and it paid off.
Design as Marketing
Once they had built hype, Tesla built a remarkable product.
By which I don’t mean a good product. I’m sure it is, but I mean a product worthy of remark — something worth talking about.
Early Tesla cars had plenty of novel features to spark conversation, but maybe none more remarkable than Dog Mode.
Dog Mode allows the car owner to leave their dog in the car with the air conditioner on — and since it’s become commonplace in the US to break windows to rescue pets in hot cars — with a message to anyone passing by: “My owner will be back soon – Don’t worry! The AC is on and it’s X degrees.”
Imagine yourself ready to bash in the window to save Fido… until you see the Dog Mode sign flashing at you. Wouldn’t that be a remarkable experience? Wouldn’t it be worth an anecdote or even snapping a photo to share? Clever design is clever advertising because it’s earned attention.
Driving as a Service
I truly think Dog Mode is an ingenious piece of design and marketing. Because it’s also part of a larger framework of upselling services that no other car manufacturer had done before Tesla. Tesla took learnings from micro-transactions in mobile apps and changed the way we think about buying cars
I have mixed feelings about this (I’ve previously written about the well-deserved sh*tstorm BMW got for holding heated seats hostage behind a subscription) but Tesla has always succeeded in making the additional features feel like upgrades rather than paywall limitations.
Not only do the additional features work to upsell incrementally, they also serve as bait for the Tesla Referral Program where brand evangelists can earn free upgrades by persuading their friends to buy Teslas. It’s Tupperware for tech-bros!
When I went to copywriting school in 2019, everyone loved to make spec ads about Tesla, and here’s the one I made. It was a series of photos of abandoned gas stations and rusty oil equipment with a tagline suggesting to “Move On” — because the Tesla owner already had and the car had left the picture. These days, the tagline could double as a catchphrase for Elon’s fanboys whenever he does something insane. Elon’s crazy? What else is new? Move on.
The Mad Genius
Tesla built a strong brand by elegantly applying psychological finesse to its products and marketing.
But there’s no conversation about Tesla without talking about the elephant in the room… or is it the bull in the china shop? Either way, Elon is batsh*t crazy now.
Everything Elon does is an ad for Tesla, good or bad.
Early Elon was an undeniable asset to the company. He was an expert at building hype, inserting himself into pop culture with cameos on The Big Bang Theory, Iron Man 2 and more. He had an excellent grasp of (the still new) social media, and most importantly, he remained in the shadows well enough to give the benefit of the doubt.
In 2016, I was on a date with the daughter of a Russian oligarch (true story but for another essay) who asked me:
“Do you know who Elon Musk is? He believes we live in a simulation. And he’s some kind of mad genius!”
That was in 2016. Now it’s a little different…
A: No one asks Do you know who Elon Musk is, because of course you do.
B: Most people I speak to leave the genius part out of mad genius.
C: The oligarchy in the US is as explosive as the one in Russia.
It may seem like long ago, but before he bought his own social media platform (surely that counts as paid advertising?!?) Elon still had to earn his media attention and cater to a progressive base of critical customers.
This made Early Elon both moderate and moderated — moderated by editors and PR people, moderate because it mirrored his audience.
He looked like the Steve Jobs of electric vehicles…
Until he got addicted to Twitter, hunting for the lulz and being a full-time meme.
Once he got his first high off Twitter (and ketamine), Elon put himself in the limelight with a constant stream of ramblings that took away the mystery.
And his public persona changed dramatically as he faced a new audience.
People like Elon always look better when you can’t see all of them.
I suspect it’s because Elon is the kind of shape-shifting narcissist whose daddy gave him emeralds instead of attention and now lacks a solid sense of self, making him a masterful manipulator since he has no identity of his own and instinctively mirrors that of his target.
Early Elon played to an audience of environmentally conscious careerists.
On Twitter, his audience became the most vocal, radical randos and conspiracy theorists the internet had to offer.
The Master Plan
The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan was a blog post by Elon in 2006 with the business strategy all laid out.
The plan was to “sell expensive cars to fund affordable ones, then scale production and build renewable energy infrastructure”.
At the time, this kind of transparency was fresh and new. In 2006, no one had yet heard of “brand purpose”. By openly admitting that neither product nor category was the goal, Elon challenged the car industry by not making it about cars.
Tesla built its business like a Silicon Valley startup with innovation, disruption, and outlets that felt more like Apple stores than car dealerships.
They applied strategic scarcity and Elon’s talents for myth-making to create a highly desirable premium brand in an electric vehicle category that barely existed yet.
But that was just the first phase of the insanely ambitious master plan.
In 2018, Tesla entered Phase 2 with the launch of the Model 3, their first attempt at an affordable car. Tesla began transitioning from scarcity-driven hype to broader market appeal… and around the same time, Elon started going off the rails.
The now-infamous “private at 420” tweet from 2018 marked Elon’s first legal trouble on Twitter and a turning point for his public persona.
With 60+ tweets per day, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and manic episodes began creeping into his unfiltered stream of consciousness. He developed a post-ironic, meme-soaked doublespeak where everything both is and isn’t a joke. This way, his followers (much like Trump’s) can defend anything stupid he says as “actually brilliant and misunderstood by haters.”
While Tesla tried to aim for a wider audience, Elon grew increasingly weird.
It’s hard to connect broadly when everything you do is polarizing.
Of course, making affordable cars and going mainstream was never the goal.
2019’s Cybertruck was a pointy reminder and maybe the boldest piece of Design as Marketing you’ll ever see.
Love it or hate it, no other car makes you talk about its maker like the Cybertruck does. Every single one is a rolling billboard for Elon.
Unfortunately, the Cybertruck is so flawed (shuts down randomly, cuts off fingers, can’t do much trucking) that it’s effectively a colossal SUV — an even dumber Hummer — only useful to Elon-loving North Americans.
Despite all its shortcomings, the Cybertruck proves Tesla's ability to dominate attention… Even if I think it is an abominable polygonic piece of sh*t that looks like it was designed by a child with a broken PS2 controller.
“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
Now, Tesla has the chance to catapult itself into Phase 3 of the master plan — if Elon can make the most of his influence over Trump.
And it makes sense to move to Phase 3 quickly.
The premium aura of old Tesla is gone, replaced by political tension as Tesla owners slap stickers on their cars that read “I bought this before Elon went crazy”.
Tesla’s success in Phase 2 has been mixed and Elon’s personal brand is too divisive for mainstream appeal.
The announcement of the Robovan and Cybercab suggests a shift toward public transportation that will eventually compete with the Model 3 and Y.
I doubt we’ll see many more affordable cars from Tesla.
In effect, Tesla is now an energy and infrastructure company.
With Tesla's ambitions tied to government policies, Elon faced a critical decision: align with Trump or risk losing billions.
In many ways, he had no other choice
If Harris had won the election, Tesla would have benefited no matter who Elon endorsed, because Harris would support green funding.
But if Trump won and cut EV permits, Tesla could be headed for disaster (and still can).
Six years of erratic Twitter rants had already alienated Elon from the left and the moderates.
His personal brand didn’t lose much from the endorsement and Tesla could potentially avoid disaster by having Elon on Trump’s team.
The choice to not only endorse but embrace Trump has brand-jacked Tesla’s image and left it uncomfortably controversial… but it may have been the only logical move for Elon.
The markets had already lost trust in him and Tesla’s stock plummeted after the announcement of the Cybercab and Robovan — a typical Elon event full of big promises and suspiciously light on specs. Patience was wearing thin… until Trump won the election and Tesla’s stock skyrocketed to an all-time high.
The Master Plan
Elon has long gone from dog mode to god mode.
A petty, vindictive old-testament god who will lash out if you worship him the wrong way.
On X, he has created a church for his believers — but even the zealots are getting banned for disagreeing with him.
Both Elon and Trump are megalomaniacal man-children who bought their own social media platforms to be the center of attention and speak louder than everyone else.
Now, Tesla’s fate is dependent on the two working together.
If Trump cuts EV permits, Tesla is screwed and Elon can lose billions.
But if Elon can keep Trump happy, Tesla can become the backbone of American transportation in the age of AI — and shape lives and culture the same way Ford did a hundred years ago.
As the official efficiency tzar and unofficial shadow president, Elon certainly has a unique opportunity to insert Tesla into the heart of American infrastructure and make history. And to become the most powerful oligarch in the world.
But does anyone trust the two raging narcissists not to get in a fight and become mortal enemies in a matter of months? Trump’s presidency hasn’t even begun and Elon has already caused his first “MAGA civil war”.
The brand image is burning and the company is chained to Elon.
Tesla can be the Ford of the future… but feels more like Mercedes in 1938.
