It has been quite a week for Adam Koszary. His quirky digital campaign for the previously obscure Museum of English Rural Life won a Gold Muse Award from the American Alliance of Museums. Hours after he tweeted his delight, the 28-year-old posted that he was no longer going to join London’s Royal Academy, but would move to a quite different role: social media manager at Tesla, the carmaker headed by the mercurial Elon Musk. As career pivots go, this is a handbrake turn.
Mr Koszary’s job prospects took off like a SpaceX rocket last year after he posted a black-and-white picture of a huge ram from the Merl’s archive on Twitter with the message “look at this absolute unit”. The post gave new life to an old meme and last month attracted Mr Musk’s attention. A banterous back-and-forth on the social media channel culminated in the entrepreneur using the ram as his profile picture. Mr Koszary briefly recast the Merl account as “The Muskeum of Elonglish Rural Life”.
How this virtual — and, for non-users of Twitter, baffling — flirtation blossomed into a job offer is unclear. Neither Mr Koszary nor Tesla has commented, though the RA sustained the light-hearted tone, wishing its un-recruit well, joking about a deal to deliver an “RA-branded Model S” car, and re-advertising the £33,000-a-year job he had turned down.