Firm rule until 2016

Media are noting that Tesla fans are disillusioned with their perfect car and its perfect cult leader.

Shouldn’t be a surprise. Getting involved in unnecessary disputes was ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS strictly forbidden by ALL rules of persuasion and salesmanship and advertising, from the New Testament to Dale Carnegie to Duane Jones. Boost the advantages of your own product, ignore all other differences. Until 2016, when ALL the rules magically changed.

With cheap necessities like soap and soup, association doesn’t have a large penalty because the product isn’t part of your status image. Association is especially bad with high-cost luxury products like cars. I discussed this in 2017:

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Around 1930 Marmon named its sub-luxury car the Roosevelt, after Teddy. Just in time for the other Roosevelt to become a hissing and a byword to Marmon customers. A little later Studie named its new cheap car the Rockne, after Knute. Just in time for Knute to get killed in a plane crash.

This should have been an obvious marketing error. Politics and football are team sports, with passionate fans and anti-fans for each politician or coach. When you pick one side you automatically lose the anti-fans as customers, even though they might have liked the car.

So we don’t have a Cadillac Ivanka or a Chevy Nixon or a Ford Paterno.

Lincoln is a major exception to the rule. I guess the jinx doesn’t apply with people who are far enough in the past that they have fossilized into household words. It certainly applies to people who are alive at the time of the naming, because living people can surprise you.

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Surprise is the key with Elon. Before 2024 he was firmly associated with DNC causes and ideology, especially Gaian lunacy. His cars gave Democrat gearheads a way to appreciate the dick-lengthening effects of acceleration without seeming misogynist or authoritarian or homophobic or sexist. When Elon CONJOINED himself with the ultimate symbol of all those insults, his fans had a hard choice to make. Suddenly they looked soft on Russia and soft on the Devil Incarnate, and they felt soft as a result..