Tesla Just Pulled Off the Best Marketing Campaign Since the iPhone Launch

Last Thursday, Elon Musk unveiled the new Roadster at SpaceX's testing facility in Texas, nearly nine years after Tesla first showed us a prototype. Instead of another cinematic video of a sports car carving through the desert, the Roadster drove upside down on a curved ramp and jumped over five Tesla vehicles, including a Semi truck, without a ramp. Apparently, a car that accelerates from zero to sixty in under a second wasn't impressive enough. Elon wanted it to fly, too.

The trick involves compressed-air thrusters developed with SpaceX technology. It's a spectacular solution to a problem nobody has ever complained about having, and I mean that as a compliment.

SpaceX engineers have been allowed entirely too much creative freedom.

The footage was so ridiculous that people thought it was AI-generated. Snopes investigated. Musk's clip pulled in more than 19 million views on X in seven hours, and Tesla shares jumped over 5% in premarket trading the next morning. Marques Brownlee's reaction was basically, "This is a prank, right?"

My favorite response was a meme about a guy who asked a girl to be his girlfriend in 2021. She told him she'd say yes when cars could fly. Five years later, he sent her the Roadster footage. She still said no.

The Rocket version even sacrifices its passenger seat to make room for compressed-air tanks. Imagine explaining to your wife that you spent a quarter-million dollars reserving a sports car she can't sit in.

Of course, there's one small problem with this incredible new car: nobody can take delivery of one. Tesla is accepting reservations, with deposits as high as $250,000, but the Rocket version that performed the stunts is invite-only and isn't approved for public roads. There's no final pricing or guaranteed delivery date, and production isn't expected until 2028.

Fast Company called it a "jumping piece of vaporware," which is a fair criticism of something Tesla first promised in 2017. The company still has to prove this engineering can become a car people can actually buy, drive, and service. A viral video is not a production line.

But I think dismissing the whole thing misses the point. Tesla just reminded millions of people what made the company exciting in the first place. The Roadster might never be a profitable product, but it has already been an extraordinary piece of marketing. You don't have to want a $250,000 sports car to send your friend a video of one jumping over a truck. And there's something worth celebrating about somebody attempting something this absurd in the first place.

The funny thing is, you can create that same fascination without building a machine that defies gravity. Sometimes you just need to put the right two people in a room.

Nathan Fielder recently released a teaser for You Can See Everything, his documentary involving Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced Theranos founder. We've had books, podcasts, documentaries, and a dramatized television series about this woman. I assumed we'd exhausted the entertainment value of listening to her (try to) explain herself.

Fielder, who famously graduated from one of Canada's top business schools with really good grades, found a new angle. The teaser is basically Holmes insisting she's telling the truth while Nathan stares at her, trying to decide whether he believes her. It's uncomfortable, bizarre, and impossible to look away from, which is essentially Nathan Fielder's entire business model.

What's brilliant about the premise is that Holmes spent years convincing people she had technology that didn't actually work, while Fielder has built a career making audiences question how much of what they're watching is real. Put these two people across from each other and suddenly you're watching a psychological experiment nobody knows how to interpret.

Is Holmes genuinely trying to convince him? Does Nathan believe a word she's saying? Is he making a documentary or setting up an elaborate joke at her expense? You don't even need to know much about Theranos to be curious about how this interaction plays out.

The teaser generated more than 2 million YouTube views in its first 24 hours. Tesla needed rocket thrusters to create a spectacle. Nathan needed two chairs and a woman nobody is sure they can believe.

Both managed to make millions of people care about something they had no intention of buying or watching in the first place.

There's a distinction between making something people will watch and making something people will talk about. The internet is full of entertaining videos that disappear from everyone's memory the moment they finish watching. Tesla and Fielder created something more valuable: a reason for people to involve someone else in the experience.

The first reaction is you have to see this. The second is what do you make of it?

Tesla's stunt invites an argument about whether we're watching revolutionary engineering or expensive theater. Fielder's teaser leaves viewers debating whether Holmes is sincere and what Nathan is really trying to accomplish. Neither campaign resolves those questions, which gives people a reason to keep discussing them.

I think that's where a lot of marketing falls short. Companies spend enormous amounts of money telling audiences what to think about their products, when some of the best marketing gives people something interesting enough to form their own opinions.

Think about dealerships. Everybody advertises transparency and exceptional customer service. What if a dealership filmed a real trade-in appraisal, explained every deduction, and let the customer challenge the numbers? Instead of another commercial claiming to be trustworthy, you'd have something customers could actually evaluate, agree with, disagree with, and share.

The same opportunity exists for software companies, creators, and brands in practically every industry. Find the thing about your product, your business, or even your personality that challenges what people expect, and give them something tangible to react to. You don't need rocket thrusters or a convicted fraudster. You need a genuinely interesting premise and the confidence to let your audience draw its own conclusions.

Of course, attention doesn't guarantee a successful product. Tesla still has to manufacture the Roadster, and Fielder still has to deliver a documentary worth watching. But they've already accomplished something most marketing campaigns struggle to do: they've made people voluntarily recruit other people into the conversation.

The iPhone launch introduced a product that changed everyday life. Tesla introduced a car nobody can take home yet. They're very different accomplishments, but both managed to turn a product announcement into something much bigger than an advertisement.

The lesson: Stop telling people your product is worth talking about. Give them something worth talking about.

My fraternity brother Shea, his wife Carly, and their two toddlers had to leave their home after discovering extensive mold hidden behind the walls, floors, and ceilings. They’ve been living with family while working to make their home safe again.

Their youngest son developed severe eczema as a baby, and Carly spent more than a year searching for answers while dealing with health issues herself. The family says that within weeks of leaving the house, their son’s skin began to heal and he was finally able to enjoy being a toddler.

Now, Carly and Shea are facing the cost of mold remediation, home repairs, and replacing nearly everything they owned, including mattresses, furniture, and their children’s belongings. According to the family, insurance isn’t covering those expenses.

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