Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Credit: SpaceX

Hurling into space the red Tesla Roadster’s via the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket boosted talk about the car brand, but didn’t budge potential sales metrics, according to YouGov BrandIndex. The group measures public perception of thousands of brands across dozens of sectors.

According to London-based YouGov BrandIndex, Tesla’s Word of Mouth score started rising several days before the huge booster’s liftoff, when 7 percent of Americans aged 18 and over said they spoke about the car brand with family or friends in the past two weeks.

Furthermore, by the launch date, February 6, that percentage increased to 9 percent, and by this past Sunday, it climbed another four percentage points to 13 percent.

Credit: SpaceX

Other metrics

Three other metrics rose for Tesla, but to smaller degrees:

• Impression (“Do you have a positive or negative impression of this car maker?”)
• Quality (“Does this car maker represent good or poor quality?”), and
• Buzz (“If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news, or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?”).

Credit: YouGov BrandIndex

Word of mouth surge

“Tesla’s Word of Mouth surge, however, barely moved its Purchase Consideration score, a meter for potential sales,” the marketing group explains in a story written by Ted Marzilli.

“Purchase Consideration actually dropped one percentage point following the SpaceX launch – from 9 percent of consumers reporting that they’d consider buying a Tesla when next shopping for a car to 8 percent – before climbing back to pre-launch numbers.”

Between January 1 and February 11, 2018, YouGov BrandIndex conducted approximately 3,300 interviews to generate this report, with a Margin of Error = ±3 percent.