(Bloomberg) — Tesla Inc. is cutting its newly created marketing team as part of a company-wide layoff, shifting away from the traditional advertising campaign that CEO Elon Musk gave the green light for less than a year ago. Converted.
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The company's “growth content” team in the U.S., made up of about 40 employees led by senior manager Alex Ingram, has been eliminated in ongoing layoffs, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Ingram also participated in the cuts, one of the people said. The company still has a small marketing group in Europe, the person said.
There were also significant layoffs at Tesla's design studio and staff in Hawthorne, Calif., said the people, who asked not to be identified.
Tesla and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
The cuts signal a retreat from Tesla's earlier advertising strategy. The automaker has long eschewed TV, radio, print and online advertising and built a formidable brand primarily through word of mouth, until Mr. Musk said last year that Tesla would “advertise a little bit and see what happens.” Ingram began building his growth team about four months ago.
Read more: Tesla engulfed in turmoil as Musk moves towards robotaxi dreams
Investors are increasingly calling on Mr. Musk to focus more on marketing as global EV sales growth slows and more competitors enter the market. Tesla's entry into advertising occurred around the same time as Musk's acquisition of Twitter (which renamed Twitter Inc. X). The social media platform has been trying to stem a sharp decline in advertising revenue under new ownership due to big brands' concerns about content control and Mr. Musk's intentions. His own sometimes controversial posts.
The disruption to Tesla's growth team underscores the far-reaching scope of the company's biggest layoffs in its history, which Musk said last week would affect more than 10% of its global workforce. Bloomberg reported that the number could be closer to 20% in some sectors, bringing the total number of layoffs to more than 20,000.
Tesla shares were down 3.9% at 10:32 a.m. in New York. The company's stock price fell 41% through April 19 of this year, the second-biggest decline in the S&P 500 index.
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