Tesla's First Ad? Possible

CNN reports from New York.

Tesla made a commercial. It may be their first. Elon Musk said they'd "try a little advertising." This was a week ago.

A new video by Tesla Asia came out. It's only 2 minutes long. A mother in Singapore talks about her Tesla car. She has two young children. The driver explains why she loves her Tesla Model 3. She speaks in English. The car costs about $47,000. She is really happy with the design and that it helps the environment.

She says the car is smooth and safe to drive every day. She likes the "autosteer" feature that prevents her from switching lanes when she's exhausted after work and driving.

We don't know if this is the start of a big ad campaign or just a one-time video. Tesla is starting with a small group because their Tesla Asia account only has 170,000 followers. It's way less than Tesla's main Twitter account, which has 20 million followers. Usually, Tesla shares videos of their staff, but not of their customers.

Musk didn't want to advertise for Tesla before, he preferred word of mouth. But he changed his mind last week. He told shareholders at a meeting that Tesla will "try a little advertising." People were happy about this and Musk was surprised at how much people wanted it.

Tesla and Musk have changed their minds about advertising. Musk used to say demand was high enough without advertising.

In 2019, he tweeted that Tesla doesn't advertise or pay for endorsements. The money is used to make their product better.

Musk talked to CNBC after the meeting. He said he didn't plan to advertise before the meeting. But someone asked him about it.

Tesla faces more competition from other car companies now. These companies are advertising their electric cars a lot. Some of these cars aren't even for sale yet.

When Musk bought Twitter, he may have realized the importance of advertising. Twitter made most of its money from ads before he bought it. But now, advertisers are leaving Twitter.

He thought it was ironic that Twitter needs ads. He talks about his previous views on ads. Now, he tries to get advertisers back on Twitter.

"Advertising is great and I think everyone should try it."

Chris Isidore from CNN helped with this report.