??? Elon Musk Hates Marketing
What up, marketers. Welcome to a marketer deep dive edition of Adam’s Letter. Thank you to the newest 913 marketers who use this newsletter to earn more and further their careers. If you haven’t yet subscribed, please join us!
Author’s note: today is a throwback to one of our marketer deep dive issues. Testing a new format where I point out some key strategies used by one of the world’s best marketers, then provide helpful links to guide you as you learn about those strategies. I also include my takeaways at the end.
Elon Musk hates marketing.
When asked in 2006 how he would market the forthcoming Roadster, Musk answered with a list of product ideas then wrapped up his points by saying:
“Then, don’t tell anyone.â€
His disdain for marketing stems from what he views as a lack of focus on building a great product.
In 2016, Musk bought a company his cousins had founded called “Solar City.â€
After acquiring the business, Elon fired his cousins. He thought they were too sales and marketing-focused. So he moved the solar company into Tesla and tossed it to his engineers who were tasked with building a product so good it would market itself.
It’s difficult to argue with the results of his strategies.
Since 2006, Musk has built Tesla into the most valuable automobile company in the world while also making himself the richest individual in the world.
Despite his apparent disdain for the practice, he’s built his fortune on being a killer marketer.
In addition to being a true innovator, Elon is a marketing genius who has found ways to tap into the power of personal PR, beautiful human-centered design, and customer experience to build the biggest brand in the world today: himself.
Here are the top marketing lessons we can learn from the world’s richest man:
Personal PR: Cut the fat between customers & product
As I said, Musk is skeptical of marketing or selling of any kind. Anything he views as “manipulative marketing†is a non-starter for his companies. Ads, Press, PR, all out.
Instead, he uses a direct-to-consumer strategy that cuts out any layers between him and his customers. This strategy allows him to shorten the feedback loop between customers and product design.
The alternative to paid ads is an organic community. This is Musk’s marketing superpower. He creates followers who are so loyal to his vision that they become the mouthpiece he needs to spread the brand message. Customers are his evangelists. His most loyal followers do his PR management and promotion alongside Musk himself.
The same disdain Elon has for ads extends to his views on Public Relations. He prefers to give information straight from the source (in most cases, him). While this can cause issues in the public markets, it does generally breed a transparent conversation with consumers and Elon’s brands.
Create Truly Beautiful Things:
Much like Steve Jobs before him, Elon is obsessed with the design of beautiful things. To Elon, design is intuitive.
It solves a fundamental problem. It looks great doing it. Everything else is unnecessary.
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“If a design is taking too long, the design is wrong.â€
Musk is famous for pulling design back to “first principles thinking†which puts the customer use case as the first priority and strips out any other “requirements†for the design.
Elon claims to spend 80% of his time on design and engineering. Whether this number is accurate or not, it represents the importance good design has to him. Musk keeps a bank of beautiful visuals that he collects and sends to his design teams to inform their design of both physical and software products.
Elon recognizes that much of corporate America is built around unnecessary complexity. In response, he has forced his teams to kill their “darlings†or their designs that might be beautiful but are unnecessarily complex.
Don’t Sell, Entertain
Whether he’d acknowledge his marketing prowess or not, Elon has a gut instinct for what matters on public discourse and what doesn’t.
His ability to shape narratives, messages, and storylines to entertain the masses is another superpower that goes overlooked.
He doesn’t sell, he entertains.
The most entertaining outcome is the most likely.
Earlier this year, Musk was challenged in the markets by Mark Zuckerburg’s launch of “Threads.†Rather than launching a pithy campaign to combat the new product, Musk challenged Zuck himself to physical combat.
This is nothing new for Musk.
In 2018, he announced his intention to take Tesla private by tweeting he’d secured funding to buy the company at $420/share (a marijuana joke).
Maybe the most compelling version of Musk as an entertainer is when he hosted SNL. Despite there being several awkward moments and his standard marijuana jokes, Musk is the single publicly traded CEO to hold the mic.
He uses comedy to draw people into his brands and extend his message. Even at the expense of his short-term likability at times.
Adam’s Takeaways
Like him or hate him, Elon is probably the most impactful entrepreneur and marketer we have today.
I compared him to Steve Jobs earlier. There are definite similarities.
Musk may bristle at that comparison, though. While Jobs embraced his role as marketer and pitchman, Musk views himself as a product engineer and innovator who sells out of necessity.
I think there is value in that view for all of us. As marketers, we can work harder to improve the services we provide, the experience our customers have, and the products we work with. If we deployed the same 80/20 split Musk does into product and experience, I believe the 20% we spend on marketing would become almost intuitive.
I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Elon. In addition to the links above, I’d recommend Walter Isaacson’s newest biography to any who are interested:
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think and if you’d like to see more marketer deep dives in the future.