Journey to Utopia — Pitch Like Elon Musk
The secret to beating hypercompetition
Young startup teams set out with a vision to change the world. But today, they often face intense competition for investment, talented employees, customers, and advisors that mutes their impact. The pace of innovation has accelerated to a point where traditional differentiation is a sure-fire way to get lost in the crowd.
That means great ideas, world-changing innovations, millions in funding and years of intense work can be undermined by an inability to excite people.
However, this intense feature-focused competition opens up new opportunities for differentiation. Tesla succeeded despite well-equipped, funded, and manned competitors. They’ve convinced investors, hired experts, developed complex products, and rallied customers across the world behind them, all at a breakneck pace.
From the very beginning, Tesla’s motor has been a strong strategic narrative. They’ve built teams that are not only eager to be part of their mission, but willing “to be the equivalent of Special Forces”. And they’ve forged a unique emotional connection with a global audience, an accolade their competitors cannot simply copy.
Tesla’s strategic narrative is evident in each of Elon Musk’s pitches and interviews. We’re going to deconstruct Musk’s Model 3 revelation to show you exactly what goes into both an exciting pitch and a competition-killing strategic narrative.
Let’s explore the Journey to Utopia:
1: Start with a profound change
Musk starts their strategic narrative by calling attention to a profound change in the world: record high concentrations of CO₂. Illustrated by the unprecedented growth rate on the graph, this change directly addresses our tendency to be optimistic about the future: it clearly shows things aren’t getting better so we need to act now.
By calling attention to this undeniable shift, which is independent of Tesla, Musk can move his audience from adherence to the status quo to action… but to achieve this, he first needs to humanise the change, to show exactly why it matters to his audience.
2: Define what’s at stake
Rising global temperatures threaten to increase the likelihood of natural disasters and unforeseen environmental changes. There is also a significant issue that’s affecting people right now: tens of thousands of deaths in the US alone are attributable to transportation emissions.
Emissions are killing people, a fact that everybody, including climate change deniers, can agree upon. By calling attention to this, Musk created a tangible enemy that his audience can align against.
It’s important to note that Musk hasn’t directly pointed at the audience and accused them of causing the (or having a) problem. He’s created a separate enemy that they can collectively attack, avoiding resistance and giving his audience the opportunity to be the heroes, rather than the villains.
3: A glimpse of Utopia
With an enemy established and heroes poised to fight it, Musk introduces a vision of a better world. In this new world, we have transitioned to sustainable energy, therefore eradicating deadly emissions from our cities.
By showing what success looks like before introducing your products, you can position capabilities as tools that enable your customers to reach utopia. It gives everything you do critical context, and serves as a compelling answer to the question: so what?
Until this point Musk hasn’t introduced a single product or feature. He has differentiated Tesla from the competition by positioning them relative to a better future, a utopia. This gives Tesla an intangible emotional advantage that many young tech startups fail to consider.
4. Features facilitate the journey
The Journey to Utopia is arduous, interspersed with difficult challenges. If it were easy, your company wouldn’t need to exist!
At this point, the audience is eager to hear about the new ways that Tesla is going to help customers on their journeys. But before Musk gets to the new Model 3, he reflects on Tesla’s achievements in the past.
Starting with the Tesla Roadster, Musk introduces lessons, capabilities, and features that have been developed over the years. The benefits are twofold: first, Musk can describe what to expect in the Model 3 while referring to tangible evidence; and second, Musk proves that the Journey to Utopia isn’t just a marketing ploy, it’s a strategy that exists at the core of Tesla.
Reimagining the electric car
Back in 2006 Musk published The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan. The plan starts with the Tesla Roadster, a sports car built to overcome the lack of “really great electric cars” and public perception that they “would be slow, ugly, low range, and have bad performance”.
The Roadster was a great success for Tesla. It proved without a doubt that high performance electric cars were possible, and inspired other brands to experiment with their own programmes.
More than a toy
The Roadster brought to light new challenges. For example, many saw it as a toy, rather than a daily driver. To overcome this, Tesla launched the Model S. A high-performance sedan designed specifically to be a great car that could be driven daily.
Musk asks the audience:
“Any of you drive a Model S?”
They erupt in cheers.
Scaling impact
The scene that Musk has set and the proof that he has demonstrated serve as a great platform to introduce the Model 3. It is a car designed for scale, with a more affordable price that will appeal to a broader audience.
Features overcome challenges
Musk never fails to pair features with challenges. From acceleration to the Supercharger network, each feature surmounts challenges on the Journey to Utopia.
Take the Supercharger network. Musk starts with a concept that we can all relate with: a car should give us the freedom to travel where we want when we want. That’s exactly what the Supercharger network enables.
The result is an audience that values your capabilities because they understand exactly how they fit into their Journey to Utopia.
5. Prove it
Building a new product is always difficult and Musk’s audience know this. Scepticism is normal, especially when you’re asking customers to spend money, so to quash any doubts three Model 3’s drive onto the stage.
To reinforce the outstanding reception, Musk announces that “the total number of orders for the Model 3 in the last 24 hours has now passed 115,000.” An impressive number that alludes to a growing waiting list that no buyer wants to be at the bottom of.
Musk has engaged his audience with a story that empowers them to be the hero. He’s demonstrated what utopia looks like and shown how Tesla is making it possible. And he’s provided solid proof that these aren’t just ideas, but real products that hundreds of thousands of customers are ordering.
Tesla’s Growth Motor
The Journey to Utopia transformed a car unveiling into a celebration of Tesla’s success and the future that they’re enabling.
From the launch of the Roadster, Musk has deployed strategic narratives to power growth. They’ve created a connection with their customers that goes beyond their products. It inspires fan-made ads and a movement of people who are playing their part to build utopia. And that’s something that their competitors can’t easily replicate.
It’s not enough to simply come up with your own strategic narrative. Like Tesla, you have to deploy it throughout your organisation. Every person in every team should be emphatically focused on helping your customers reach utopia. The evidence proves that this is the approach that Musk has taken from the very beginning, even before they had a product on the market. Tesla eats and breaths their strategic narrative, and so should you.
You can watch Musk’s Model 3 pitch on Youtube. This is also the source of the screenshots.
Overcome Hypercompetition
Zealous Digital partner with businesses to unlock unprecedented growth and defendable differentiation. We develop and deploy strategic narratives that drive fundraising, hiring, product development, marketing, and sales.
Learn more at https://www.zealous.digital