Tesla may still be retaining customers to a greater degree than other automakers (based on 2022 data), but it has taken a serious reputational hit. A recent survey of 100 top brands showed that Tesla’s brand reputation dropped from #11 in this ranking to #62.
Not a great result in this survey for Tesla dropping from 11 in 2022 to 62 in 2023.
It is difficult to measure the impact of Elon’s past actions/decisions/toxicity on Tesla’s brand outside of surveys like this, and price cuts mask a lot of things. https://t.co/r4sPSEZvwo
— James Cat (@TSLAFanMtl) May 24, 2023
This is the sort of thing that may not have immediate or even obvious effects, but there’s little debate that having your brand reputation drop dramatically is not good for sales, or for talent acquisition. Tesla CEO Elon Musk still claims that demand exceeds supply and that Tesla and SpaceX remain the top two places where graduating engineers would like to work — based on other survey data conducted every year. Will the latter change in the next survey? Or is the brand reputation hit perhaps much less pronounced in the world of young engineers than elsewhere? Or is Tesla (along with SpaceX) so far ahead of the crowd that it remains on top? We don’t have the answers to any of those questions.
We should also note that companies and their reputations can get better and worse at the same time — in different ways. Tesla might still be seen as the automotive or even manufacturing leader in terms of innovation and exciting work prospects while also taking a hit on workforce equity, corporate governance, worker rights, and/or cultural inclusion. And, frankly, much of the non-Tesla stuff Elon Musk has tweeted may have damaged the company’s reputation greatly at the same time that most people see the company as improving and maturing. That said, the brand reputation hit noted above is no small matter and may indeed influence these other aspects of the company as well. We don’t know. We’ll have to wait to see if other surveys and/or data show a similar hit to Tesla’s reputation and sales.
What Axios says about this Axios Harris Poll is:
- “FTX and Tesla, once seen as shining examples of innovation and opportunity, took two of the biggest reputational hits in this year’s Axios Harris Poll 100 brand reputation survey.”
- “Tesla saw one of the biggest reputation drops of the past year, from 11th in 2022 to 62nd place this year, with a 74.3 RQ (79.5 in 2022).”
Featured image by Zach Shahan | CleanTechnica
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