“Advertising earned works better than advertising bought.”
Tesla does not just create cars; they are creating solutions to global warming; the Elon Musk narrative is something that the normal human being can relate to “if a vehicle is spewing toxic gas, it’s bad for your health.” It’s not rocket science; it’s not something that anyone has to go through tons of research to prove or disprove. It is a living reality – the world we live in is in trouble, and we have three types of people in the world now; those who are aware of this and stopped at being aware, those who are aware but chose to ignore and those who are aware but is doing something about it. And it is still safe to say that majority of us does not really have a choice, we can do things in our way to make things better, but to see a brand like Tesla stepping on the forefront to address this issue with the use of technology.
And because of this, everyone started to want to be part of this conversation; Tesla is creating something “cool” so naturally almost everyone wanted to talk to Mr. Musk (stop here for a while and think about the last time you struggled to get media attention). The whole world was paying attention to this brand either to find out when it’s going to succeed or when it’s’ going to fail – either way, all ears are on them.
And it’s as if we already had enough of this “coolness”; Tesla unveiled recently the Tesla Model 3, the vehicle that CEO Elon Musk hopes will take the electric car to the masses. As of this writing with hundreds of thousands of reservation, it’s a done deal.
I’m not a car enthusiast; I don’t even have my own bicycle. What I wanted to point out here is we might be too busy enjoying the future through this technological breakthrough but for marketers like me, we might be missing something huge here.
When was the last time you saw an ad campaign from Tesla Motors?
Yes, exactly. I just went to google and tried to find one – no luck.
What does this mean?
The basic premise of content marketing is for brands to find their value, and let others discover that value and decide to get hold of that value (purchase), And the transfer of value happens from brand to consumer through effective communication.
But when the value is as obvious as what Tesla has, you can eliminate everything in between and as what is happening now, Tesla is transforming us into marketers by making all of us part of the conversation.
And if this is not enough reason for you to be convinced why you need to start defining your brand’s value and start communicating it as part of a strategy, I don’t know what will.
Tesla did something good; “Accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport”. It’s so good that if plants could speak they would also talk about it.
How about your brand? How defined and communicated is your brand value? Or are did you even get to the point where you can define that brand value?
