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Tell us you don't know anything about marketing without telling us you don't know anything about marketing.
Last week, multi-billionaire marketing genius Elon Musk fired the newly formed content and marketing team a year after reluctantly saying he would “try a little advertising and see how it goes.”
News of the layoff came on the heels of numerous reports of bugs, failures and limited sales of Tesla's newest product – the bigger and thicker back-to-the-future DeLorean known as the Cybertruck. It also came just before Tesla's latest earnings report.
Should you care that 40 people on Tesla's marketing and content team were unceremoniously fired? Is this a good thing for the brand? What does it say about your prospects in marketing?
We asked Robert Rose, CMI's chief strategy advisor, for his opinion. Watch this video or read on to learn his insights:
What a difference a year makes
Last week was tough for about 40 people in Tesla's marketing department. However, I imagine that many expected her departure in one way or another.
Her departure was part of an ongoing, broader layoff at Tesla, which previously announced plans to reduce its global workforce by 10%. Given that Tesla still has more than 140,000 employees, the total number of layoffs could ultimately reach 30,000 to 40,000. So the loss of 40 marketing and content employees, who might better be described as communications professionals, isn't the most meaningful part of the Tesla story.
But what strikes me most is Tesla's sudden about-face in its views on marketing, advertising and content as a modern company. Just a year ago, Elon Musk seemingly reluctantly said he would try advertising. At this point, the content team already existed, but was given a new mandate to try out “a bit” of advertising. A year into this experiment, Elon said the ads on its X platform were “way too general.”
But were they? Maybe they were, maybe not. Maybe his team wasn't big enough or lacked the skills to produce great brand advertising. Maybe the team did a great job but couldn't get it approved. Maybe they did but couldn't promote it properly. Today's modern marketer recognizes so many things that get in the way of producing – and publishing – outstanding creative work.
Undoubtedly, Tesla's former marketing and content teams should be proud of the work they did. In a LinkedIn post, the group's leader, Alex Ingram, wrote about the demise and thanked his team for the amazing creative work they have done over the years.
So what's the takeaway?
History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes
Back in January, which seems like ancient history to me, I wrote about Solo Brands bringing its brand marketing team to its knees after a disappointing sales quarter for its Solo Stove, despite their amazing creative work. His Snoop Dogg campaign went viral, but six weeks later the company hadn't achieved the sales it wanted and fired the CEO. I pointed out that there was probably something bigger at play, but they felt compelled to scapegoat the marketing plan.
So here we go again, but this time it's Tesla. As the famous quote goes, “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
Although most news reports say the 40-person team has only been in existence for about a year, I read that the employees have been there for much longer. In Alex's LinkedIn post, he mentions that they have been working on communications, public relations, and social media since 2019. It was Elon's quote to “try a little paid advertising” that was a year old.
On the surface, the valuable communications team was doing interesting things, but then they had to try advertising. It didn't work to Elon's liking, so Tesla fired the team.
This makes almost as much sense as tearing down a social media platform to its foundations to see what will break and then being surprised when it does.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned with the Solo Stove challenge, marketers have to be used to this. When things are going amazingly well, marketing almost never gets the credit. It's the vision of the brilliant CEO, the extraordinary sales team or a superstar product that wins. Then it fails, and marketing is almost always to blame.
It's a bargain that marketers have accepted for as long as marketing has existed.
Don't let Tesla give you advice on what to do
What annoys me the most is when a CEO, board, or leadership team feels the need to give up marketing, even though it's most certainly not their fault. If things were going well for Tesla – and they really, really aren't – would Elon take time out of his busy day to thank the marketing and content team that created the ads? Of course not.
So, given the layoff of 10% of Tesla's workforce, why would he bother slagging a team that makes up 0.0002% of the company and saying their work is “generic”?
Because Elon thinks he knows better and his insecurity forces him to say the quiet part out loud. Even more problematic are the leadership teams across the industry who hear this statement and say, as they did when Twitter was taken down, “Maybe we should do that too.”
Spoiler alert for these executives: Don’t. Tesla always viewed marketing and branding as an afterthought. Its noted absence is not commendable, but rather one of the countless symptoms of the challenges facing the automobile company. No leadership team can learn anything here other than what not to do.
Bon voyage to Tesla’s former content growth team. Let me know if I can help you. Your work was fantastic. Your colleagues from marketing and communications are at your side. You will all end up in a better place.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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