Tangible Brand Communication – The Tesla Phenomenon

Communication must be tangible

Im­per­son­al mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion is long gone. Peo­ple want to be emo­tion­al­ly af­fect­ed, to feel un­der­stood and be part of a com­mu­ni­ty. As a com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy, ‘brand ex­pe­ri­ence’ com­bines these re­quire­ments and has be­come in­dis­pens­able for firms. It is the on­ly way in which com­pa­nies can se­cure people’s long-term loy­al­ty in a sat­u­rat­ed mar­ket. Thanks to the cur­rent re­lease of its Mod­el 3, Tes­la is a prime ex­am­ple of suc­cess­ful brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Shooting star in the marketing sky

In this re­spect, Tes­la is an ad­ver­tis­ing pi­o­neer, as the firm com­plete­ly re­frains from tra­di­tion­al ad­ver­tis­ing. It fo­cus­es on event, so­cial me­dia and in­flu­encer mar­ket­ing. With 24.9 mil­lion Twit­ter fol­low­ers, CEO Elon Musk is prob­a­bly the brand’s biggest in­flu­encer. The com­pa­ny has al­so es­tab­lished a loy­al fan­base by means of com­mu­ni­ty build­ing and brand ex­pe­ri­ence, in the form of Tes­la store events and road­shows. Its sup­port­ers ex­cit­ed­ly await the next re­lease years in ad­vance and queue for hours to be at the front, just like scream­ing Justin Bieber fans.

Linking the right message with the right product

From the out­set, Elon Musk for­mu­lat­ed a con­vinc­ing for­ward-look­ing vi­sion for Tes­la. A pow­er­ful vi­sion is at the heart of its suc­cess, which is not about the brand it­self, but about the added val­ue of de­vel­op­ing the au­to­mo­bile for hu­man­i­ty, the en­vi­ron­ment and so­ci­ety. The tac­tic seems to be work­ing: Tes­la is the first com­pa­ny in the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try that has man­aged to cre­ate a hype of this mag­ni­tude. No oth­er firm has so far record­ed half a mil­lion ad­vance or­ders, with­out its clien­tele hav­ing seen the car in per­son.

An exhilarating driving experience 

Brand­soul had the priv­i­lege of or­gan­is­ing a kick-off event for the dual mo­tor Mod­el S. This in­clud­ed a dri­ving course that al­lowed at­ten­dees to ex­pe­ri­ence the brand at first hand. More about this event: http://www.brandsoul.ch/project/tesla-eine-marke-erleben/.

We’ll be at­tend­ing this year’s launch of the Mod­el 3 in Zurich and doc­u­ment­ing this spec­tac­u­lar event. The next is­sue will al­so in­clude an in­ter­view with Switzerland’s first Mod­el 3 own­er, Tes­la ex­pert and fu­tur­ist, Lars Thom­sen, on the pow­er of brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Stay tuned!