Tesla brand strategy
Realigning the company to its mission
Imagine electricity being harvested from people’s kinetic energy expended on the floors as they walk to the metro. The technology is already available. Imagine collecting friction energy from all the moving trains in NYC. Imagine this power feeding right back to run the trains, elevators, and lights in a metro system. Tesla has already began to provide back-up electrical power for a city. Let’s take it all the way.
Brand Audit and Strategy >
Identifying unique opportunity for Tesla
Visual Design Decisions >
Thought process of the visual brand elements
I began with a visit to a tesla showroom, then test drove the model s, and talked to the people there.
Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. They pioneer in long-range, all-electric, high-performance vehicles.
People believe in Elon Musk. His association with SpaceX and The Boring Company give Tesla a higher purpose for people buy into.
However, Musk's master plan is focused on building cars:
Build sports car
Use that money to build an affordable car
Use that money to build an even more affordable car
Elon’s Master Plan Part 2 consists of utilizing solar roofs, expanding the electric vehicle product line, developing a self-driving capability to eventually enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it.
[Source: www.tesla.com]
Current Audience
The current Tesla is premium. It attracts car buyers with incomes above $100,000, even for Model 3s.
Intended Audience
Tesla’s desired audience is the mass market. It wants to attract this target market with affordability and sustainability.
Tesla’s current brand attributes
All-electric
For mass market
Zero-emission / Sustainable
Premium
High performance
Cutting-edge technology
By mapping out Tesla’s products and services, I realized that Tesla has various energy technologies that make up an ecosystem of energy generation, storage, and usage. I start to question whether there’s an opportunity outside of their current focus of producing electric cars (right column of this chart).
I looked at Tesla’s competitors in both the sustainable fuel vehicle industry as well as the energy industry. I took into account all competitor’s logos, colors, and photography styles to generate Tesla’s unique new look.
One thing was clear: no one else had a complete ecosystem of technology that generates, stores, and utilizes energy like Tesla.
Tesla had already began to provide electricity storage and generation solutions for the government. It has a great opportunity to reach its mission of accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy here.
Tesla's scope of work toward its own mission is too small as it focuses on cars for the private sector.
Tesla is more than a car company. Tesla is an energy solution company.