Tesla Inc. boss Elon Musk, who has never used traditional advertising to sell cars, said Tuesday that the automaker would try it and see whether it produced results.
Musk said it was "ironic" that as CEO of Tesla, he now owns Twitter. The social media platform is highly dependent on ads and will soon be led by advertising veteran Linda Yaccarino, who he hired last week.
'Advertising Is Awesome'
"So I guess I should say advertising is awesome, and everyone should do it," Musk said at Tesla's annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas. "We'll try out a little advertising and see how it goes."
Musk also dispelled speculation he was stepping down as Tesla CEO.
The pivot to test out Tesla ads underscores his efforts to shore up investor confidence in the car maker's prospects at a time when rising competition and a slow economy has forced Tesla to slash prices.
Since Musk acquired Twitter in October, advertisers have fled the social media platform, worried that their ads could appear next to inappropriate content after the company lost nearly 80% of its staff.
Musk has for years resisted the idea of advertising, tweeting in 2019 that he "hates advertising" and "We use that money to make the product great."
But on Tuesday, he said many people did not know about the affordability of Tesla cars and their "amazing" features and functionality.
Co-Founder Straubel Joins Board
Later on CNBC he talked about affordability of Tesla cars. “If the car payments or your home payments go up you have less money for other things,” he said.
He told the gathering that sometimes the pain of working has been “quite excruciating." He called his time as CEO of Twitter a “short term distraction” and said the company needed open heart surgery to ensure its survival.
It's now in a stable place, and he's happy to have Linda Yaccarino, whom he hired away from NBCUniversal, to run Twitter. Musk said the amount of time he'll devote to Twitter will be “relatively small” compared with the last six months since he bought the social media platform.
Before Musk's talk, shareholders voted to place Tesla co-founder and former chief technology officer JB Straubel on the company's board for the next three years. Straubel left Tesla in 2019 to start a battery materials recycling company.
Shareholders also re-elected Musk and Chairwoman Robyn Denholm to the board.
With reporting from the Associated Press
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