Steve Jobs, an Apple founder, was legendary for stimulating demand. He worked without surveys or focus groups. He was a genius, peerless in his generation. He saw an unborn future many years ago. He was an icon, who changed his world. He developed a good design paradigm of working at the perception of customers, beyond their needs and expectations. He found glory and Apple triumphed with iPod, iPhone, iPad and more. (Read Steve Jobs perception demand in details here).
I call this Perception Demand because Mr Jobs used his vision to create new industrial sectors. He used his talent to launch the new dawns in the apps economy and the smartphone economy, at scale. Sure, Blackberry and Nokia might have been ahead, but he redesigned the sectors through his products. Blackberry pioneered the smartphone sector, but Apple is the world’s largest public company due to smartphone.
Elon Musk, looking at how he sells cars, is doing just that. He is building a tribe, taking customers to the level of fandom, and they are responding very well.
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Jon Erlichman notes Ad spending per vehicle sold for various cars (sure, Tesla does spend small amount as per filing)
Lincoln: $1,911
Jaguar: $1,542
Cadillac: $1,418
Alfa Romeo: $1,226
Fiat: $224
BMW: $203
Honda: $196
Dodge: $91
Tesla: $0
Source: Ad Age (2019)
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It’s not that Tesla isn’t running ads, the thing is that it’s running free ads, getting more popular without spending a fortune.
When you work on and sell products that make people to dream and aspire, you may not necessarily pay for ads, people will be running the ads on your behalf; it’s generic.
Tesla gets all the free media, spectacular reviews and all that; same way Apple is known and admired beyond its PR spending.
Do stuff that truly matter, and the people of the world will carry the message around…