Elon Musk Agrees to Hold Contest for Fan-Made Tesla Ads, at the Urging of a Fifth Grader

Elon Musk is well aware that Tesla’s superfans love to make unauthorized commercials for the brand, given that Tesla doesn’t make its own (and, given the power of word of mouth, doesn’t really need to).

But it has taken a fifth-grade girl to convince him to actually run a fan-made ad.

“Dear Elon Musk, I’m Bria from Ms. Esparza’s 5th grade class,” she wrote to the Tesla founder in a letter that her father (a writer for InsideEVs.com) also posted to Twitter. “I have noticed that you do not advertise, but many people make homemade commercials for Tesla and some of them are very good, they look professional and they are entertaining. So, I think that you should run a competition on who can make the best homemade Tesla and the winners will get their commercial aired.”

Within an hour of the Twitter post, Musk—who apparently is as smart as a fifth grader—brightened to the idea. “Thank you for the lovely letter. That sounds like a great idea. We’ll do it!” he wrote.

We’ve written about a number of fan-made Tesla commercials here on AdFreak over the years. The best known is the 2014 spot called “Modern Spaceship,” with a lovely extraterrestrial them, from Everdream Pictures.

A year later, Parachute and director Sam O’Hare, made its own gorgeous Tesla spec ad, “Fireflies,” which was all the more stunning as it was completely CGI.

More details on the Tesla contest as they become available.

Tim Nudd

@nudd

Tim Nudd is a former creative editor of Adweek.