Social Listening Blog - @teslamotors

I chose to write about the marketing and social media account of Tesla because I thought it would be

interesting to look at the comments due to the brands being controversial in political settings. Tesla Motors

sells electric cars, and was one of the first to go large scale on the market of “self driving” features which

have been consistently improving since the company gained popularity almost a decade ago.

Tesla motors is trying to sell cars and trucks. Occasionally they will advertise and showcase something

from a company also owned by Elon Musk because other companies are also tech based and always

moving forward in their respective fields.

The following comments are from @teslamotors on Instagram:

    This comment is referring to a post recently made by Tesla Motors on instagram. The post entails  

back and forth comparisons between the Tesla and what the viewer can obviously tell is a Toyota

Prius, even though the logo is covered up badly and the screen can be seen spelling out the word

Prius. A lot of the other comments are pretty similar saying it was tacky to try and make Prius look

inferior to the Tesla, and that a lot of consumers prefer Prius to Tesla.

    This comment is under another recent Instagram post from Tesla Motors. This comment got no response

by Tesla, and a lot of similar comments are in the sections with no responses by the company. It only has

one like agreeing with it, but there are other comments addressing how it could potentially be a safety issue

with newer models having a switched drive and reverse paddles.

Another comment under a recent post addressing some potential safety issues of the Tesla cars. This

one is addressing the self-driving feature and how there are still tweaks that need to be made to the system

before the company can charge so much for a subscription.

The @teslamotors instagram page has a following of 9.5 million, and the account is only following

the Space X instagram page and @boringcompany, another business founded by Elon Musk

focusing on building freight tunnels. In terms of frequency and content of posts, they are pretty

regular. They post multiple times a week, sometimes daily but typically every couple of days. The

content is mostly videos of cars and the features that come with the Tesla, but sometimes they

switch it up and showcase other technology being worked on. As well as my personal favorite, a

post of a silver trash can with wheels captioned “raccoon edition” after multiple raccoons have been

spotted trying to climb on the Cyber Truck because it is boxy and resembles a trash can. The

comments under this post did not find it as amusing as I did, saying that this is the company’s way

of saying they regret debuting the cyber truck.

One of Tesla’s main downfalls has been the political association of Elon Musk, and that reflecting

on the brand. It already makes consumers weary of Musk and Tesla as a whole. When comments

are ignored and safety issues are not addressed by the company it builds the walls between

consumer and seller even higher. There is virtually no transparency and that puts people on edge

and lowers consumers willing to shop from Tesla.

Additionally it makes the brand less personable and cuts connections even further when a company

publicly brings down other brands to make themselves look better. A brand should not be so worried

with what other companies are coming out with if they are secure in the value of the products they

are making.

The thing I think is currently making people more mad about issues they may have with Tesla aside

from politics is a lack of accountability and understanding from the company. The example

comments I selected had blatant safety issues that could be potentially harmful or fatal to their

consumers, who are paying a lot of money to the company. They do not respond to any comments,

criticisms or positives. The only exception is on the post about Prius they commented “No shade to

Prius - this is a showcase of the average vehicle’s push to start feature.” Which still makes it sound

like they are implying Prius is inferior in certain ways to Tesla. If I was the social media manager I

would focus on communicating publicly with the customers, and having more transparency online. 

Previously I found it hard to think of any examples of bad public marketing, but after analyzing

this I think it is a lot more common than I thought. There are a lot of brands that could use some

basic improvements to their marketing that would improve lots.

Sources:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DVwenzKkmwq/

https://www.instagram.com/p/DG8ntZ1OuGu/?img_index=1

https://www.instagram.com/p/DWmpH1FEqx1/