What do you think a presentation by Elon of the latest models is?

What do you think putting a Tesla on a rocket and launching it towards Mars is?

What do you think PR pieces talking about the latest Tesla tech are?

Elon tweeting about Tesla is advertisement. It's not because it's not a pretty picture in a magazine page that it isn't.

not paid advertisements or endorsements as Elon says.

They don't advertise to consumers.

They have an enormous B2B sales team.

Sales reps are for B2B, not B2C.

Generally speaking, business to business customers expect a certain amount of investment from your company into integrating with them when they offer you a contract.

Sales is part of this.

"Sells itself" means the product able to stand on its own and raise awareness without paying for advertising to do it.

You of course need people to sign contracts & complete the purchase, that's irrelevant to how well the product is able to raise awareness without advertising, i.e. people interested in buying Tesla's didn't hear about it through any of their advertising.

I imagine Shannyn Sneed must sit around all day doing nothing then.

The only person I know that works for Tesla is Elon Musk, who's made a point to say they don't pay or advertising or endorsements https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1129924410339495937

Advertising is only a small part of marketing.