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A Tesla Marketing Plan Proposal

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Hello Everybody,

Been on these forums for not too long, but have been a Tesla enthusiast since day one. Currently I am in grad school and worked on a marketing project with my group members to really boost Model S sales and aid in making the car more mainstream.

This is just an inkling of what we came up with but unfortunately the page limit killed us. Please give it a read if interested and let me know your thoughts. Perhaps somebody from Tesla is reading this and might want to discuss.

It's a bit of a long read but the good stuff comes at the Marketing Plan part, I had to give a lot of background because we presented to the class who knew nothing about Tesla Motors. And the Appendix has some print ads we created.

Feel free to give it a quick readView attachment Tesla Motors Marketing Proposal.pdf
 
Your "LL" consumer profile on page 26 looks exactly identical to TMC's "Soflauthor" - he's certainly is a huge Tesla enthusiast, but, nevertheless thought it was nice compliment as he's family.

Not sure you want your integrated marketing to be started/grounded in print ads and bolstered by celeb events and endorsements. Given that Tesla is so revolutionary in every thing they do, it would serve them better to be more disruptive with their marketing plan (i.e. your idea of disruptive, targeted pop-up events and Tesla Films).

On the whole, the background and targets you've established in the paper are strong, but, the media/marketing plan should be more innovative (like the brand) to really break through the clutter. Clearly, a heavier digital strategy is needed too. Other than that, the paper was well-researched and thorough - kudos! :biggrin:
 
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I agree 100% that the print ads and celebrity endorsements are very much "run of the mill" but I think these are relatively cheap and can grab some reservations pretty easily (especially for the LL consumer profile) which is why we put it in there. But for my whole Academy awards plan I haven't seen an automaker do that yet... The thought that popped into my mind was imagine a iron man red with gold wheels Model S with the cast of iron man 3 or something pulling up to the red carpet and we had 7 people get out of a Model S while cameras roll. For me that would be a money shot. A lot of A listers own a Model S, wanted to leverage that.
 
Aznt,
That was fun to read through, I remember putting together reports like that with other car companies, Tesla would have been way more fun! I'm looking forward to seeing what Tesla actually does. My 2 cents is that they will (and should) keep going with the guerrilla (free) marketing as long as they can, and just let the cars sell themselves. They have done an excellent job of letting the press do their advert. for them. Even that spat with the NYT worked in their favor because it became so back and forth that it got on a lot of new people's radar. Now I think the smartest things they can do is just keep leveraging their growing strengths. One of their strongest (aside from the cars) is the growing reputation as the best new All-American company in decades. Now that they've paid off the gov loan which should create a lot of goodwill, I think another good step would actually be another partnership with the gov; a charging station partnership with the National Parks. I think that could be useful strategy in most countries actually, not to mention charging stations in many state and local gov parking areas. Ideally you want a product to be so good, so in innately in demand, that it just doesn't need marketing, I'm thinking the Model S will look like that more and more.
 
Thanks for the good word. I think the free press and marketing is great. I also think Elon's work in leveraging his name and the internet is phenomenal. With that said, I come across people everyday who have no idea what Tesla is. My plan is more to augment Tesla's current Guerilla marketing tactics and continue to evolve and slowly ease into the mass market. There's this huge perception that Tesla's aren't affordable (even to people who I know have upper income levels) and they won't even step foot into the store because of this. So basically it's like they see it and stop at looking at it immediately because it's already written off.

Then you have the set that don't really follow the news/twitter/etc. for some reason which is what my plan is meant for. Quick glances but build a lasting impression that compels them to go into the store, or intrigues them. The whole idea of being a revolutionary is the core concept. Human beings by nature want to be part of something (most at least). The plan, like I stated somewhere in the paper is to facilitate Tesla's maturing process and really remove the question of... do we have enough demand?

I got some more crazy ideas, but... those are trade secrets and Tesla would have to contact me haha.