This quote on Advertising from Jeff Bezos shows he didn’t believe in advertising. He changed his mind.

“Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service.”

It’s a dream we all have: a company so good it grows from word-of-mouth alone. That’s what Jeff Bezos had with Amazon. And they didn’t advertise. Then, by 2020, Amazon had become the world’s largest ad spender.

Why? There could be several reasons:

• You advertise to defend a position as much as to gain it.
• You advertise when you can afford it because if you start when things start to go wrong, you have no budget and you’re too late.
• Good times don’t last.
• When you’re much stronger than your competitors (new or old), it’s a good time to knock them down.

You need to launch a new service that people don’t associate with you. We go into more options in our article on why we should advertise even when business is booming.

It’s also worth noting that BMW never used to advertise either. That changed. And Tesla still doesn’t advertise. Yet. As more car makers release electric cars we’ll see if that changes. Electric will soon be the norm, certainly in car advertising if not in cars. When that happens, what does Tesla have to offer?