Paul Catmur: Elon Musk doesn't advertise, why should I?

Elon Musk is often held up as an example of someone who doesn't advertise, but is this entirely true? Photo / Getty Images

OPINION:

I'm not a big party-goer, but despite myself I wound up at a small function over the break where a guest who had foolishly stumbled into my orbit enquired what my job was.

Lacking either the small-talk skills, or the exceptional career, to answer with anything more interesting, I told him that I used to work in advertising. His mouth set a little as he mulled over whether he should say what he wanted to say. Then, emboldened by alcohol, he decided to go ahead: "You know, I have grown my company into a great little business. We export to several overseas markets; we grow turnover and profit every year. And we have never spent any money on advertising."

I swear there was a glistening in the eyes that gazed triumphantly at me over his beer. The obvious pride he took in this achievement suggested that he expected it to be acknowledged, not debated. "That's great, well done," I said. "How's the fishing been?"

The poetry of capitalism

The reality is that if advertising didn't work nobody would have bothered to invent it. Of course, the emphasis of marketing is constantly changing and there are differences in degrees and budgets, but it remains that advertising is a principle foundation of capitalism, some would consider it the defining part. Professor Michael Maynard describes advertising as the "Poetry of Capitalism", though I'm not actually sure if he meant that as a compliment or not.

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To not invest in advertising as a matter of principle is to tie one hand behind your back. It has been used for thousands of years as a way of distinguishing between different products. To advertise means to say "I am so proud of my product that I will spend money by putting my name on it and promoting it publicly" which is one of the simplest ways of signalling quality.

Tesla

Of course there are exceptions, such as Tesla, which famously doesn't do advertising. However, bear in mind that Elon Musk is his own celebrity influencer and has 60-odd million Twitter followers which enable him to instantly spread any message that he wishes to spread. Also attaching your car to a space rocket and sending it to space is the sort of advertising campaign that any agency would scramble to be a part of. It would have cleaned up at Cannes.

Survivor Bias

While most people know about Tesla's aversion to paying for publicity, it is an outlier among the many companies who choose not to spend any money on advertising. Most of them sink without us ever hearing about them, in part because, of course, they don't advertise. That Tesla has done so well without advertising doesn't make it a safe path to follow. Unless you have the charisma of Elon Musk combined with the quality of Tesla's product, a space programme to piggy-back off and the global impetus behind electric vehicles maybe you should consider using a little help.

For example

I sleep with the French windows open almost all year round and when the wind drops my bedroom becomes extremely popular with the local insect life. So when, before Christmas, I saw an ad for fitted insect screens it nudged me into action. The chap who came along was very helpful but clearly a bit frazzled. He told me that a new company had recently taken over and had started running TV ads. These ads had so far resulted in him having taken more orders in the past month than he had in the previous 12.

Of course, this is just a sample of one and a clear example of recency bias, but my question to anyone who proudly talks about how their business has grown without having used any advertising is: "That's great. But think how big your business might be if you had used it."

The pride that some people take in achieving business success without using advertising is interesting. It's an attitude shared by the committed smokers who proudly announce that they have run a marathon without training, or those who connect their TV to Wi-Fi without asking a passing teenager for assistance. Of course it can be done, but why make things harder than they have to be?

• Paul worked in advertising at a quite good level across New Zealand, the UK and Australia including co-founding an agency in Auckland. This is a series of articles about how to make the best out of maybe not being the best.