The Boring Company: The Evolution of Promotional Product Sales

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Unbelievably intelligent, truly enigmatic and making billions; Elon Musk has been making tech and entrepreneurship cool since 2002.

Elon Musk is the brains behind the electrical transportation company, Tesla and the revolutionary space tech company, Space X.

However, the pioneer has another side to him that has come to light through his Twitter account.

With a following of nearly 20 million people, Elon Musk attracts his fans with regular updates on his multi-million dollar companies, with a charming addition of sarcastic yet dry humour that captivates his audience, gaining thousands of re-tweets and likes every day.

As one of the greatest minds of the century, the popularity of his Twitter account has developed a fascinating persona that has his fans hooked, and he knows it.

With Elon Musk’s most recent business venture, he has taken his online persona and used it to transform promotional product sales with the development of his tunnel construction company, ‘The Boring Company’.

With his most recent business venture, Elon Musk aims to resolve traffic problems in L.A, to raise money for it, he decided to sell branded ‘Boring’ products using his ‘big boy building bigger toys’ approach to social media to take a whole new approach to advertising.

First up on the ‘Boring’ production line; baseball caps, with a seemingly humorous promise to sell a flamethrower if he sold 50,000 units.

Social media erupted.

The caps were sold at lightening speed, promoted through Musk’s fan base on Twitter and Instagram, before ‘capping’ (Musk’s words, not ours) the sales at $1 million.

Now that’s how you use your social media following to market your business.

Sure enough, with the success of the caps, pre-order sales for $500 ‘Boring’ branded flamethrowers came online at the end of January 2018.

Actual flamethrowers.

With flames.

The Boring Co. founder encountered some shipping issues, which he openly, and rather comically, stated on his Twitter feed, informing his followers that the flamethrower had been renamed ‘Not A Flamethrower’ due to customs refusing to ship anything called a flamethrower.

The Boring Company also shared a playful promo video of Elon Musk and his colleagues showing off their ‘Not A Flamethrower’, followed by his sales pitch: ‘don’t buy it, unless you like fun.’

However, it wasn’t all fun and games.

The Californian assembly released statements declaring Musk’s ideas as ‘terribly insensitive’ to the wildfires that spread across the state in 2017. The assembly planned to ban the flamethrowers, despite the fact that the product complied with state regulations of firing within 10ft.

Musk’s response: ‘I’d be way more scared of a steak knife.’

Despite the controversy, 20,000 people purchased the flamethrowers in 2 weeks, raising a further $7.5 million for the ‘Boring’ tunneling venture.

Why?

Other than a coming with a complimentary ‘Boring fire extinguisher’, Elon Musk’s followers want to invest in his products.

The man is a multi-billionaire, a space man and an engineer, who likes fun. With a high following on Instragram and Twitter, he has established trust and respect from his fans, who are more than willing to invest $500 in a flamethrower, just to be part of the action.

Elon Musk is bending the limits of technology, space travel and now launching sales and mechanising ideas into the galaxy; who wouldn’t buy a flamethrower from him if he said it was cool?

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