2023’s Top 10 Marketing Moments
Having watched Mark Ritson's Top 10 Marketing Moments 2023 (on 12th December 2023), I thought it was yet again a hugely insightful and educational session with Mark, Sherilyn Shackell and The Marketing Academy.
The top 10 didn't disappoint with Amazon's Grannies Tobogganing making an appearance alongside Barbie, Purpose and of course AI.
I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a watch.
🤔 At the end, there was a challenge to identify a Marketing Moment that should have been on the list…so here is my offering:
📐 I would propose Tesla's Cybertruck, Elon Musk and the power of ‘not doing advertising’ (which Musk is famous for claiming).
💥 The CyberTruck gained fame back in Nov 2019, by the product launch demo going sideways when the metal ball smashed the ‘bullet-proof’ car window. It caused the share price to fall 6.3% but grabbed headlines globally....
A quick search for "Tesla window smash 2019" on YouTube shows the top 3 channels and their viewing figures of that footage being watched:
☀ The Sun: 3m views on YouTube
💹 Bloomberg Technology: 1.8m views on YouTube
🗞 The Guardian: 3.4m views on YouTube
Awareness was sky high and there was ”no advertising”
That was the genesis for the 2023 Cybertruck marketing moment.
📈 Fast-forward to 2023 and it has reportedly over 1.9m pre-orders
📐 Then two weeks ago on Nov 30th 2023 there was a launch event with the first customers taking delivery of their Cybertrucks.
🔥 This in my mind is where the marketing genius of Musk and his team comes in…they know what the customers want.
The content created for the event was spot on:
🔫 1.Bullet Test: They fired machine guns at it…and it survived (2.9m views on YouTube)
🚚 2.Truck Pull: Towing a 17.5 ton truck digging a plough into the dirt (3.2m views on YouTube)
🏎 3. Porsche AG 911: Beating a Porsche 911 in a drag race…whilst the Cybertruck is towing an identical Porsche 911 on a trailer (2.1m views on YouTube)
📐 4.Cybertruck Promo film (1.3m views on YouTube)
This doesn’t come close to the 100s of millions of views the Cybertruck has got as creators have documented their own Cybertruck experience and edited the Tesla content to create their own content.
As a quick example:
1️⃣ Marques Brownlee: “Driving the Tesla Cybertruck: Everything you need to know” = 17m views YouTube (40!!! Mins of content)
2️⃣ @Mark Watson (CarWow): ”My Cybertruck Experience” film = 3.8m views YouTube (that’s almost 17mins of content)
3️⃣ Joe Rogan: Firing an arrow at the Cybertruck = 4.4m YouTube views
So…why this as a contender:
🥇 Knowing your audience + creating engaging content + embracing influencers and creators = great marketing
And in my view….this IS Advertising.