5th-grader who gave marketing advice to Tesla is 'really, really excited' it's using her idea
"I’m so, so happy," Bria Loveday said on "GMA."
-- Bria Loveday, a Michigan 5th-grader who wrote Tesla a letter suggesting a new marketing campaign for the upscale electric-vehicle company, is “really, really excited" that CEO Elon Musk is taking her advice.
“I didn’t think that would happen,” Bria, 10, said in a Skype interview on “Good Morning America.” “I didn’t think he would answer. I’m so, so happy.”
Her idea was that Tesla invite the public to submit homemade ads for the company and then air the winning commercial on television.
Bria said the winning advertisement should be “something to entertain people and get their attention,” adding that she’s unsure if she would enter the competition herself.
Bria’s dad, Steven, posted on Twitter a letter his daughter wrote to Tesla to ensure the company would see it, and it wasn’t long before Musk personally replied.
"Thank you for the lovely letter,” the billionaire CEO tweeted. “That sounds like a great idea. We'll do it!”
Bria said she had been inspired by a school assignment to write a letter to a company.
“My dad writes about cars and he’s always talking about it [Tesla], so I learned about it from him,” she explained of her choice of company.
Steven Loveday writes for automotive websites.
“I told her if she ‘snail mailed’ a letter, Elon would never get it,” the father told ABC News. “We got in touch with Keely Sulprizio, one of Musk's communication/PR people, and asked how we might get something to him quickly. Keely replied in less than a half hour. She sent the letter directly to his office and suggested that we screenshot it and tweet it, then tweet it to her so she could make sure he would see it. He replied in about an hour. We were floored.”
Some people online have expressed skepticism about whether Bria wrote the letter herself. But her dad said it is indeed her work.
“She actually wrote it,” he said. “She loves writing. I help her edit her stuff, but she's gotten better, and she reads a ton."
The proud father isn’t exactly surprised by his daughter’s success. He said he’s always known how headstrong and intelligent she is.
“She wants to be a lawyer or a politician,” he said. “She likes her voice to be heard and she likes to be the boss and she definitely says what she feels. She dresses like Punky Brewster and she doesn’t care. She definitely wants to be in the public eye and she wants to help people.”
Unlike most big car companies that use high-paid marketing executives and ad agencies to spread the word about their products, Tesla does none of that.
Now, thanks to Bria, Tesla told ABC News that it is working on the details of a commercial contest.