Tesla said advertising was useless. Then sales slowed down.

In May 2019, Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla “does not advertise or pay for endorsements. Instead, we use that money to make the product great.”

Four years later, at Tesla’s 2023 annual shareholder meeting, Musk changed his tune after acquiring Twitter, a company that makes money from selling ads.

"There's obviously a lot of people that follow the Tesla account and my account on Twitter — to some degree it is preaching to the choir and the choir is already convinced… we’ll try a little advertising and see how it goes,” Musk said, answering an audience question.

That advertising, it appears, has not gone well.

In March, Tesla started running ads on Musk’s newly acquired social media platform. Then, on April 22, Tesla fired its entire 40-person ad content team just four months after it launched, with Elon Musk commenting, “the ads were far too generic - could’ve been any car.” One day later, in what looks like an advertisement in all but name, American Idol judge Katy Perry tweeted a picture of her standing in front of a Cybertruck: “thx for delivery @ elonmusk.”

Why did Musk change his tune about advertising in the first place? Well, in 2019 when Musk was proudly anti-advertising, Tesla’s deliveries almost doubled from 63,000 in Q1 to 112,000 in Q4. However, growth has since slowed, with deliveries declining year over year by 8.5% in Q1 2024.

Advertising is an important growth strategy for automakers, especially in the US, where GM, Stellantis, Ford, and Toyota each spent more than $1 billion in 2022, so as sales slow for Tesla, it makes sense they would take ads for a test drive.

However, Tesla seems to be struggling to find its stride in advertising after 11 months, and the company advertising Musk’s cars on Musk's site feels redundant.