Public relations are a key task for many car manufacturers.
But Tesla boss Elon Musk puts a full brake on PR.
This is causing a stir in the industry.
Tesla
boss Elon Musk likes to break taboos.
Now the multi-entrepreneur has
pre-buttoned
his own
PR department
- and shaved it right away.
Observers follow the experiment with
tension
and
horror
.
Munich - When
Elon Musk
is dissatisfied with the performance of his employees, the multi-entrepreneur takes tough action.
Famous and notorious is how Musk
dealt
with his assistant
Mary Beth Brown in
2014.
When Brown asked for a raise after twelve years of working together, the Tesla boss immediately asked her to take two weeks off.
During this time he wanted to see if he could take over her duties, Musk told his assistant at the time.
Two weeks later, Musk told her that he no longer needed her.
Brown is by no means an isolated case.
Musk kept putting employees out of the door overnight.
In June 2018, for example, the physicist fired several engineers from his space company
SpaceX
within a few hours
because the high-tech screwdrivers were too slow for him.
Elon Musk dissolves Tesla's US PR team because they can't compete with his Twitter account which has 39 million followers.
This is the biggest Twitter follower flex ever.
https://t.co/8pINh5Fwvc
- Dare Obasanjo (@ Carnage4Life) October 6, 2020
Now the ban on the multi-entrepreneur has hit an entire department.
Musk, reports the US side
Electrek
, have
unceremoniously dissolved
the entire PR department of the electric car manufacturer.
"We no longer have a PR team," Electrek boss
Fred Lambert
quotes
a senior
Tesla
employee.
This would make the Californians the first car manufacturer in the world that no longer has its own public relations department.
Tesla: Abolition of the PR department causes astonishment in the industry
The move is astonishing in the industry.
Competitors such as
Mercedes-Benz
,
BMW
and
Volkswagen
maintain hundreds to ensure good weather for their brands.
The communicators, some of whom are highly qualified, take care of driving presentations, test cars for car editorial offices, or explain the advantages of new generations of engines.
With the Californians nobody does that anymore.
Can
Tesla Afford
That?
Musk apparently thinks so.
After all, hardly any other automobile manufacturer currently has as much media coverage as the e-car pioneer.
The decision could also be related to the fact that Musk recently felt that he had been treated unfairly several times in the press.
Evil tongues are claiming that
Tesla
did not do any press work with the existing PR department.
In fact, the author of this report, for example, has sent inquiries to the Californians' press office several times, but has not received a contact phone number or an answer to emails to date.
Other journalists had also complained harshly in the past about a lack of response to press inquiries.
Tesla: In the future, there will be information mainly on Elon Musk's Twitter channel
In the future,
Tesla's
PR should therefore primarily consist of the short messages that Musk
sends
via his
account.
But journalists shouldn't have too much hope for feedback.
The probability, writes Electrek boss Fred Lambert, that Musk will respond to a press inquiry via Twitter, is "less than one percent".