Tesla is now buying advertising on Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) to get Tesla shareholders to vote for his CEO compensation package worth up to $1 trillion in stock options.
Tesla, under Elon Musk’s leadership, has famously been against advertising. The CEO is even on the record saying that he “hates advertising” and that “other companies spend money on advertising and manipulating public opinion, Tesla focuses on the product.”
However, that was before he acquired Twitter, now X, which relies heavily on advertising.
After that, he started to push Tesla to do some advertising, but the company quickly stopped or greatly reduced its advertising efforts.
We reported that Tesla’s advertising effort picked back up last week, starting with a few Google ads to encourage Tesla shareholders to vote for Musk’s new unprecedented CEO compensation package worth up to $1 trillion.
The automaker is in a full-on marketing blitz to convince shareholders to vote for the package and to allow Tesla to issue more shares in exchange.
Now, Tesla is even buying social media ads to push shareholders to vote for Musk’s compensation package and they are even buying ads on Musk’s privately owned platform, X:
They are also buying ads on Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit.
As we previously reported, Tesla’s board has claimed that voting for the compensation package will determine the future of Tesla.
Musk went even further and linked his compensation package to the future of the world.
Earlier today, the CEO claimed that his compensation plan is not about money, but about control over Tesla:
It’s not about “compensation”, but about me having enough influence over Tesla to ensure safety if we build millions of robots. If I can just get kicked out in the future by activist shareholder advisory firms who don’t even own Tesla shares themselves, I’m not comfortable with that future.
The CEO previously threatened Tesla shareholders not to build AI products at Tesla, despite claiming they were critical to the company’s future, if he doesn’t get 25% control over the company.
Electrek’s Take
The CEO of a publicly traded company threatens shareholders to gain control over the company and uses company funds to purchase ads that benefit his privately held company, with the goal of persuading the shareholders of the publicly traded company to give him more money.
If that’s not late-stage capitalism, I don’t know what is.
Also, I know I won’t shock anyone here, but Elon is lying about this not being about money.
If he wants to increase his percentage of Tesla shares, he could do exactly what his friend Larry Ellison did with Oracle and do long-term buybacks. It would benefit everyone, but it’s not what he wants. He wants the shiny new stock options.
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