What’s on Elon Musk’s mind is no secret.
A prolific Twitter user, even before his $44 billion takeover of the company, Musk publicly muses on everything from space exploration to politics and regulation to Taylor Swift’s business sense. The litany of incendiary thoughts he’s shared on the social platform is equally as plentiful—he’s tried to end the war in Ukraine by challenging Russian president Vladimir Putin to “single combat,” briefly teased taking Tesla private and put himself in the hot seat with the SEC, and made comments on gender pronouns which were widely received as criticism of the LGBTQ+ community.
Given that Musk runs some of the world’s more prominent, high-risk and (at times, or depending on what he’s tweeting) lucrative companies, you’d expect there to be some robust PR firepower behind handling thought leadership or crisis management. But Musk doesn’t believe in public relations. He’s called it “manipulating public opinion,” characterized the media as a “click-seeking machine,” named reporters lobbyists, not journalists, and famously led Tesla to become the first major automotive manufacturer to dissolve its PR department.
Most recently, Musk unceremoniously dismissed Twitter’s communications department amid one of the biggest tech acquisitions of all time—not even The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times could get in touch for comment. Following months of radio silence from Twitter’s once-responsive press email, the unmanned account randomly resumed activity by responding to inbound media inquiries with a simple, automated message: 💩.
Like I said, what’s on Elon Musk’s mind is no secret. He’s made his stance on media, PR and communications abundantly clear. So—I was surprised and delighted to find out that Musk recently headed out for a full-blown media tour.
While Musk seems to be positioning the appearances on political programs as a practice in nonpartisan briefings, it’s hard to ignore that his timing occurs against a backdrop of Twitter losing half its valuation since his takeover and plummeting Tesla shares. I think it’s more likely this media tour is a calculated exploitation of the appetite of journalists by trading entertainment for advertisement. Regardless of his intentions, Musk has undeniably and uncharacteristically returned to traditional media relations with primary talking points centering on a defense of how he’s chosen to run Twitter (see coverage here and here).
PR and communications teams exist to serve as guardians of brand reputation and integral partners in executing business strategy, and Musk has made a show of deprioritizing these functions at Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX. His current effort to leverage conventional comms strategies as his fortune faces flux is what I’d define as “last-ditch” for Musk, meaning either hell has frozen over or he just single handedly validated the entire PR industry. I’m going with the latter and taking Musk’s media tour as a clear signal that media outreach is still one of the most effective strategies for establishing brand visibility and a strong corporate narrative.
