DETROIT — General Motors is suspending its promoting on Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform, the corporate told CNBC on Friday.
The Detroit automaker, a rival to Musk-led electric vehicle maker Tesla, said it’s “pausing” promoting because it evaluates Twitter’s recent direction. It’ll proceed to make use of the platform to interact with customers but not pay for promoting, GM added.
“We’re engaging with Twitter to know the direction of the platform under their recent ownership. As is normal course of business with a major change in a media platform, we have now temporarily paused our paid promoting. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will proceed,” the corporate said in an emailed statement.
Under CEO Mary Barra, the Detroit company was among the many first automakers to announce billions of dollars in spending to raised compete against Tesla within the battery electric vehicle segment.
A General Motors sign is seen during an event on January 25, 2022 in Lansing, Michigan. – General Motors will create 4,000 recent jobs and retaining 1,000, and significantly increasing battery cell and electric truck manufacturing capability.
Jeff Kowalsky | AFP | Getty Images
A spokesperson for Ford Motor, one other Tesla rival, told CNBC that the automaker isn’t currently and had not been doing any promoting on Twitter prior to Elon Musk’s take-private deal. They added, “We’ll proceed to guage the direction of the platform under the brand new ownership.” Meanwhile, Ford is constant to have interaction with its customers on Twitter.
Other auto corporations, including Rivian, Stellantis and Alphabet-owned Waymo, didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment on whether or not they plan to suspend promoting or discontinue using the social media platform in wake of Musk’s $44 billion buyout of Twitter.
Electric truck maker Nikola said it had no plans to alter anything regarding the platform.
The long run direction of Twitter has been central to the takeover story. Musk has said he’s a “free speech absolutist,” who would restore the account of former President Donald Trump, who was banned over his tweets throughout the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Musk said on Friday that he plans a “content moderation council” and won’t reinstate any accounts or make major content decisions before it’s convened. Musk also said in an announcement to advertisers this week that he cannot let Twitter grow to be a “free-for-all hellscape.”
Henrik Fisker, CEO of EV startup Fisker Inc., deleted his Twitter account earlier this yr when Twitter’s board accepted Musk’s bid to purchase the corporate and take it private. Fisker Inc. continues to make use of Twitter, which each and every major automotive brand utilizes for customer engagement and marketing.
Musk has long boasted that Tesla doesn’t pay for traditional promoting, a value that has added up for conventional automakers’ brands through the years.
As an alternative, Tesla rewards individuals who run, or are members of, Tesla owners’ clubs in addition to other social media influencers who promote the corporate’s products, stock and Musk on social networks, especially Twitter and YouTube in addition to on fan blogs.
They are sometimes granted early access to Tesla products, like the corporate’s Full Self Driving Beta software, and given passes to company events where attendance is restricted.
In September 2020, Tesla weighed a stockholder proposal to start strategic, paid promoting to coach the general public about its vehicles and charging network. The Tesla board really useful against it, and shareholders voted with the board against beginning to pay for traditional ad campaigns.
In the corporate’s annual report for 2021, Tesla wrote: “Historically, we have now been in a position to generate significant media coverage of our company and our products, and we imagine we are going to proceed to achieve this. Such media coverage and word of mouth are the present primary drivers of our sales leads and have helped us achieve sales without traditional promoting and at relatively low marketing costs.”
It reported marketing, promotional and promoting costs were “immaterial” for the years ended Dec. 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019 in financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
— CNBC’s John Rosevear contributed to this report.
