In October 2022, Elon Musk paid 44 billion dollars for Twitter. Since then, he’s been the center of the world’s attention. He’s raised the ire of roughly one-third of the country with his ubiquitous trolling of the Left while eagerly driving another third to canonize him the Patron Saint of Free Speech. The last third, frankly, they really don’t care. In the meantime, pundits have suggested Musk’s ongoing “Q-Elon” antics negatively impact his other businesses – most noticeably, Tesla.
The question is… is any of this true, or is Musk “playing” us?
Is there a larger strategy in mind?
From a branding perspective, I believe the answer is YES.
Let’s face it- Elon Musk is an enormously successful businessman who hasn’t made too many mistakes. This leads me to eschew the “Elon is melting down” narrative.
He’s quirky. No doubt. But not crazy. Kanye is crazy.
More importantly, Musk has always favored branding over marketing. Branding is a long-term strategy designed to build top-of-mind awareness, whereas marketing is a short-term strategy designed to drive sales. Marketing gets people to your shop today. Branding gets people to talk about you every day.
Think about it. Have you heard or talked this much about Twitter since Donald Trump was active on the platform? I would venture to say that Donald Trump was the single greatest branding vehicle Twitter ever had. Every day, people, regardless of whether they loved Trump or hated him, logged onto the platform to find out what outlandish thing he tweeted. The mainstream media then covered his Tweets ad nauseam and saturated us with Trump – all day, every day.
While all that appeared to happen an organic manner, it really formed as a result of some fundamental but unsettling rules of branding.
1. It’s easier to get people to feel than to think.
2. Feelings are a stronger connection than facts.
3. People will act on and talk to others about their feelings
4. When it comes to feelings, it’s easier to make people upset than happy.
Best I can tell, Elon Musk is simply rerunning that same campaign. The only difference is he’s replaced Trump with himself. This time around, however, the national and Twitter demographics are even more in the campaign’s favor.
As of 2022, 26% of voters identify as Democrats, 30% identify as Republicans, and 42% identify as Independents (or non-party affiliates). So, if you’re going to pick one block to alienate – it’s the Democrats. Compare those statistics with the Pew Research conducted in May of 2022 that found 32% of liberals/Democrats use Twitter compared to 17% of conservatives/Republicans. This indicates that Twitter is more effective in reaching Democrats than Republicans.
So the Donald Trump/Elon Musk Twitter branding playbook looks like this:
– Use Twitter.
– Say things that make Democrats crazy.
– Let them talk about you every single day.
– Reap the PR benefit that comes with the fact that, according to research from The Washington Post, 8 out of 10 political journalists are liberal/Democrats who will also write and talk about the things you posted that made Democrats crazy.
– Bask in the glory of everyone who likes to see Democrats get crazy.
Now, allow me for a moment to be even more cynical:
Elon Musk isn’t using all of this Twitter noise to boost awareness for Twitter (although that’s undoubtedly its primary purpose). Instead, he’s likely also using it to distract Tesla investors from focusing on the much more complex, much more challenging to solve, REAL issues with that company.
Some say… “Elon Musk’s tweets have exposed him as a right-wing nutjob, and they are now impacting Tesla’s stock.” Thisis a super easy-to-understand, super convenient way to explain why the stock has tumbled more than 45% since Musk bought Twitter. It’s also BS.
Linking Tesla’s stock numbers to Elon’s tweeting is like drawing a correlation between ice cream sales and the crime rate. Sure, the number for both may go up simultaneously, but they really don’t have anything to do with each other. Moreover, the one-year trend of Tesla stock prices shows that the company’s issues extend further back than Elon’s buying of Twitter.
Looking beyond Tesla’s stocks, it’s apparent that the entire auto industry is getting crushed.
No. It isn’t Elon’s tweets that are the problem. Tesla’s issues are far more complex.
1. Tesla stock has traditionally been grossly overvalued. Investors treated it like a tech company rather than an automobile company. Stock prices were pinned to some utopian dream of a cleaner, greener driving future in which every human on earth wants to drive an electric car – and the only one available is a Tesla.
2. Tesla’s have been on the road for a decade now. We are beyond the shiny promise and can base our judgment on a solid track record. The facts are Tesla’s costs more than the average car, and they are more expensive to maintain; they have no dealerships, significant build issues, and more than a handful of horrific, fiery deaths.
3. Tesla can’t meet their production targets because of critical issues at their China plant. The wait time for a Tesla is as much as 30 weeks. The average earth temperature will rise 2°C before you get your car. Since there are plenty of other EVs on the road now, consumers have a choice that doesn’t include waiting for more than half a year.
In looking at the real hurdles facing Tesla, it would be great to suggest to investors that things will turn around the moment Elon Musk either quits tweeting or hires a new CEO. Musk is 100% in control of those options and can execute them whenever he wants.
In my humble opinion, what we’re experiencing is not the Musk meltdown. It’s not the end of Twitter (nor the end of Tesla, for that matter). Most likely, we’re witnessing a well-thought-out branding campaign designed to boost the overall awareness of one company (Twitter) while hiding the problems and buying time for another (Tesla). That doesn’t mean any of it will work. It just means that it’s not an accident.
Genius or Crazy? We’ll see.