Wasted Words: Advertising
Elton Musk is a controversial figure. Whatever he is - he's visionary.
Musk is famous for a lot of things but especially the Tesla electric car, as a practical alternative to cars powered by fossil fuels.
In the world of PR and advertising, he should be famous for his (anti-) advertising strategy. He isn't. Because to PR and advertising companies, he is the kiss of death, the anti-Bernays, a PR anarchist, the x-ray machine at the airport that shows you have no junk.
That's the thing. Most (not all) ad companies have no junk.
Bernays, you will remember, convinced the world that advertising:
could control the way people thought could want things that they really didn't need, like cigarettes
But Bernays' primary targets were not ordinary people but the rich people who owned companies and aspired to the kind of control he was promising.
It was an easy sell because women had been liberated by WWI in which they had done a lot of things men used to do on the home-front - including smoking. The invention of the machine rolled cigarettes made cigarettes a lot more convenient and made it easier to keep fingers cleaner. Colgate introduced tube toothpaste in 1890, which helped keep the teeth cleaner too. Bad girls were in. Sexy was in. But it had to look good.
So Bernays did not smoking to women; rather, they sold the idea to him, and he sold it to the old rich guys who ran cigarette companies and whose ideas of women were rooted in the past.
Everyone knows the old saw that 50% of advertising is wasted. But which half?
Today, the most obvious examples of advertising waste are probably in the car industry. Take a good look at Toyota's recent global campaign, "Start Your Impossible". LOL
Large ad companies sell stupid -- and stupider.
Elton Musk is not stupid. Tesla doesn't advertise. As the ground-breaker, it doesn't need to and the millions that are saved can be pumped into development.
Of course, other companies will eventually produce vehicles that are similar -- in which case, advertising can only serve to "identify" Tesla and imbue it with personality. For now, it has loads of personality -- Musk's.
Apple shone not because of its advertising but because of Steve Jobs. Once he died, cracks started to appear. Similarly Tesla is Musk. Jobs was cool. So is Musk.
Akio Toyoda has tried to be cool, but he is poorly advised.
At some point, Tesla will advertise. My advice: keep it simple. Simple is genuine. Simple is authentic. Simple sells. It is as Alex Myers says, about values ... and value.
Musk is famous for a lot of things but especially the Tesla electric car, as a practical alternative to cars powered by fossil fuels.
In the world of PR and advertising, he should be famous for his (anti-) advertising strategy. He isn't. Because to PR and advertising companies, he is the kiss of death, the anti-Bernays, a PR anarchist, the x-ray machine at the airport that shows you have no junk.
That's the thing. Most (not all) ad companies have no junk.
Bernays, you will remember, convinced the world that advertising:
could control the way people thought could want things that they really didn't need, like cigarettes
But Bernays' primary targets were not ordinary people but the rich people who owned companies and aspired to the kind of control he was promising.
It was an easy sell because women had been liberated by WWI in which they had done a lot of things men used to do on the home-front - including smoking. The invention of the machine rolled cigarettes made cigarettes a lot more convenient and made it easier to keep fingers cleaner. Colgate introduced tube toothpaste in 1890, which helped keep the teeth cleaner too. Bad girls were in. Sexy was in. But it had to look good.
So Bernays did not smoking to women; rather, they sold the idea to him, and he sold it to the old rich guys who ran cigarette companies and whose ideas of women were rooted in the past.
Everyone knows the old saw that 50% of advertising is wasted. But which half?
Today, the most obvious examples of advertising waste are probably in the car industry. Take a good look at Toyota's recent global campaign, "Start Your Impossible". LOL
“In adland, we don’t call it language-mangling, we call it ‘Language DJing’ or ‘Langling’,” jokes Alex Myers, founder of agency Manifest. “In reality it’s just lazy creative work. Copywriting is a lost art. Ad agencies need to ‘Think more good’.”
Large ad companies sell stupid -- and stupider.
Elton Musk is not stupid. Tesla doesn't advertise. As the ground-breaker, it doesn't need to and the millions that are saved can be pumped into development.
Of course, other companies will eventually produce vehicles that are similar -- in which case, advertising can only serve to "identify" Tesla and imbue it with personality. For now, it has loads of personality -- Musk's.
Apple shone not because of its advertising but because of Steve Jobs. Once he died, cracks started to appear. Similarly Tesla is Musk. Jobs was cool. So is Musk.
Akio Toyoda has tried to be cool, but he is poorly advised.
At some point, Tesla will advertise. My advice: keep it simple. Simple is genuine. Simple is authentic. Simple sells. It is as Alex Myers says, about values ... and value.
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