While many debate the merits of free speech by comparing Twitter to the town square, fewer are discussing Musk actually owning the town square that also is a primary medium used to promote Tesla. Musk uses the social media site to effectively “advertise” Tesla. Together with his 84 million Twitter followers, Musk is able to use Twitter to drive Tesla awareness, favorable opinion, consideration and purchase - the primary aspirations of all marketers. Volkswagen spent $5.7 billion worldwide on advertising in 2019. General Motors spent over $2 billion on advertising in 2020 in the U.S. alone. Tesla allocates no money to advertising. Yet, Tesla thus far has become the “Kleenex” of electric vehicles.
Musk’s CEO competitors are active on Twitter as well. Mary Barra (GM’s CEO) recently tweeted about a future electrified Corvette.
Ford CEO, Jim Farley, also is on Twitter, recently tweeting about the introduction of the all-electric F-150 Lightning.
VW Group boss, Herbert Diess, is active on Twitter with tweets like the above highlighting VW’s growth in the U.S. market.
What might these legacy automotive chiefs think about Musk owning the media that they too are trying to utilize to promote their companies and products? Musk has 84 million Twitter followers. Barra, Farley, and Diess combined only have 252,000 followers. Additionally, each of their respective marketing organizations spend media dollars advertising on Twitter as well. Again, Tesla has no ad expenditures at all, including none with Twitter.
Might these legacy automotive bosses rethink their Twitter usage in light of Musk’s ownership? Can they even afford to move away from Twitter from a PR perspective? And how might any Musk driven changes to Twitter’s business model impact Tesla and Musk on Twitter versus other automotive competitors that use the social media property?
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