Russian entrepreneurs make their own Soviet-style musical ode to Elon Musk

A team of devoted Russian startup enthusiasts have launched an all-out musical campaign to convince American space entrepreneur Elon Musk to attend their business conference.

The organisers behind the Act Small business event in Krasnodar bought a billboard outside the tech tycoon’s SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, with the phrase “How do you like this, Elon Musk?” in Russian. It featured a QR code linking to a music video, in which a choir of entrepreneurs sing Musk’s praises in front of a giant, Soviet-style portrait, bake his likeness into a bread korovai, and launch a giant Elon Musk balloon.

Musk himself caused considerable stir among Russia’s Twitterati by responding to the video in Russian, tweeting that the choir had “silver tongues”.

Unfortunately, the SpaceX CEO is yet to express an interest in attending the economic forum taking place between 18-19 October.

The campaign references a former Twitter exchange that saw Musk become Russia’s social media darling earlier this year when he expressed his approval, in Russian slang, of a remodelled Soviet Zhiguli car which gave the appearance of driving backwards.

In 2018, the tech giant sent his Tesla automobile to Mars generating a wave of Russian memes, some of which featured eclectic Slavic life hacks, such as a lamp attached to a pipe with a bike lock, with the question: “How do you like this, Elon Musk?”