Explaining the “why” of the NADA Show, Main Events, Used Cars Dip

SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly

Paul Daly  00:37

It is Tuesday, everybody March 8, we're getting fired up and getting ready to get the NADA show Florida we're gonna talk about why actually do we even do shows like this? It's not just for the parties and the fun will explain in a minute but let's get into Tuesday.

Kyle Mountsier  00:55

speed at which you came into that drop this morning. Like the timing was so legit. You were like, Tuesday.

Paul Daly  01:05

So good. Sometimes it works and sometimes like, up for anyone wondering it is never rehearsed,

Kyle Mountsier  01:12

right? Are always ad libbing, right?

Paul Daly  01:14

Actually. It's it's actually not only not rehearsed, but I don't know about you QA but I literally don't even think about it until I like hit the button to start.

Kyle Mountsier  01:26

Oh, boy, we got an intro the show. This is great. Let's go.

Paul Daly  01:30

It's kind of it's kind of the safety of saying it's the day and the date. Right? There's the safety of that, like, that's just how

Kyle Mountsier  01:38

to show like four seconds that you get to think about what am I going to say for the next 12?

Paul Daly  01:42

I don't know why the shorts this show why the show starts that way. But it just does. It did it did one day. And that's just how it starts now. And it's good. It's good for the edit. It's for the edit. So the editor is like oh, this is the day that it is, um, have had some fun stuff to talk about today. Obviously, a lot of anticipation momentum building up to the Nada 2022 Show happening kicking off officially Thursday night. So a lot of people are moving into town tomorrow night, tomorrow, tomorrow night. There's some other things going on on Thursday. But I thought it would be nice to talk about why we even like why it's such a big deal in the spirit of drawing a big circle around everyone in the industry. You know, we're just I don't want to assume, right? And like assuming then everybody

Kyle Mountsier  02:30

knows us because of Keith Urban concerts.

Paul Daly  02:36

Yes, so if you don't know, this is a great little education point. So this is where some industry vendors spend gobs of money to bring in pro like Grammy winning artists to put on after parties to get dealers to come and just literally it's like, I want to I want to get a little affinity toward me because they love bourbon. And I just shown you

Kyle Mountsier  02:57

Thurman it's like the cool kids club. It's like because we're in the cool kids club. You came now we're friends. Right? Exactly. And so there's, there's, there's that whole element we talked a little bit about, like the show being the place where it's like, oh, it's in Vegas, and it kind of feels like Vegas even going into the show. And we get all those like vendor dealer partner and all of that happening, right. There's a there's a there's an agenda from each but I think what we want to talk about today is like the bigger reason the bigger like the the impetus for gathering as an industry and particularly like you said, the NADA show and not like digital dealer dmsc or, you know, the words auto conference or anything like that, like why this one in particular holds so much

Paul Daly  03:42

weight. Yeah, there's some of you may have heard her seat like, okay, the way I break it down is this digital dealer, a Brian passion meant words auto conference, right? The event, the event that we're going to put on later this year, those are events where you're usually gather, it's a little bit more topical, you know, right, digital dealer, right. It's about marketing. It's a marketing conference. And there I think there's a disproportionate from a large standpoint, around marketing, somewhere on fixed stops. There's a lot of smaller gatherings, regional gatherings that people talk about specific issues. But the NADA show is unlike any other show because it's everyone from every angle, including not just dealers, not just vendors and industry partners. But we're talking about OEMs we're talking about a gathering of a lot of thought leadership from outside automotive, we there's a whole international contingent that flies in for the show. And um, so you get exposed to a lot of different new elements, they get exposed to new elements. It really is the larger automotive community that comes together. And I mean, this is

Kyle Mountsier  04:45

Well, I think about this, like even just from the the vendors that are there, right or the or the let's not say vendors, but the people that are on the show floor, the people that have booths, right? Yeah, and you just said it, but there there are OEMs that will have full layouts there. Right. There are Our digital retailing tools are marketing tools and things like that. And a lot of times you go to some of the other smaller, especially like marketing, trended conferences and it's just a lot around the marketing ecosystem, right a lot around the website ecosystem. But what is it at nada as I'm going through the list of 530, something total exhibitors, there's looking at, you have legal entities, people that are helping with, you got car washes, you have everything in the dealer ecosystem, and you get even a little bit more on the fixed up side than you mature. A lot would hang on. Yeah. And so you get just like all of these influences. It's a place where dealers will bring their controller a lot because there's a lot of conversation around dealership finances and hearing. Exactly. So I just think it's a really unique approach to and what I would encourage is a lot of people actually go to these shows, and they they keep that one track mind of like, well, my role is x, right? I'm the dealer principal, I'm the Marketing pressure on the controller. And it actually gives you the opportunity to kind of like swing outside your role just a little bit and get a little bit more context for the rest of dealership operations. Yeah,

Paul Daly  06:14

you know, another facet that we don't talk about a lot on the show, but it's very important is the gathering of the OEMs. And every OEM has an annual meeting. And your so if your Subaru dealer, right, you go to the Subaru meeting, and you're going to have the top execs from Subaru in the room, all the other Subaru dealers, they're going to give you some information about like where we think we're going some reporting, fielding questions, I went to the super last that was the 2020, right. Two years ago, I went to the Subaru meeting, and it was awesome. It was awesome. Like, because all the execs were like, on the floor and from dealers actually

Kyle Mountsier  06:46

the Subaru meeting from what I understand. Yeah,

Paul Daly  06:49

I guess it was kind of the right one to go to I just went with with some dealer friends. You know, so they're all these elements of the automotive industry. And like you said, it's easy to get buried in your own silo, and be like, well, the buttons on the on the website aren't converting, like we need to that's the most important thing in the world. Right? It's not, it's not, right. So I like I like seeing the whole picture and helping you understand the whole picture and the complexities of the whole picture. Because it's really easy for like GMs don't understand or GMs or like marketers don't understand, or like OEMs don't understand, like dealers don't understand, it's really easy to get in our lane and forget or just live in ignorance of the complexities that are in our industry. So this is a place where you can kind of get a handle on the complexities and you're like, oh, okay, it's not just my, my little like, we care about the internet buttons. They're really important. Right, right, because I really care about the

Kyle Mountsier  07:44

man I absolutely care about yesterday, but we're talking about buttons. Yeah, for sure. Analytics and all that. I think I want to point to another layer of the NADA show and particularly nada, because a lot of people in the dealership actually hear nada. And probably the first thing that you go to is nada values, right? And so you're thinking, what's the car worth is a used car valuation system, which is nada values, which is a separate piece of the same, the same words, right? Or the same acronym, but really what the NADA show is pointing to the organizational body of franchise dealers. And not just that, but the lobbyist. That is saying, as Paul Walzer said on our on our year end extravaganza, that dealers are the best possible way for customer experience to be had at the like, at the customer. At customer facing value, right, that's and pushing back on the belief that direct to consumer model is a good thing. And so it's actually doing this enables that organization to so show a stronger look to the place where they're lobbying, lobbying in DC to the community, right? Actually, we got some really cool information this morning. And every single year, nada does this but wherever they're at, they actually donate, they give back a portion of the proceeds of the event to the community. They're going into that they're practicing what dealers are doing on a daily basis.

Paul Daly  09:19

I love that. You know, it was really cool, too, because we're on the press release email list now. Yeah, nada. We're like, Hey, we got the press release sent to our email. But yeah, that highlighted this point, that nada is just really embodying the spirit of auto dealers, right? This is the champion that you know whether or not there are good things, bad things, right. There's never all good things, right. It's always good things, challenging things. It's parallel rails in life. And nada show is a place where you get to experience all that and look growing in empathy. Growing an empathy is how you're going to be a better operator, you're going to be better at your job, you're gonna move up more, you're going to be able to serve the people around you better because you understand along the lines speaking of challenging things, and great segue you didn't know I was gonna say this Kyle, because having a baby everybody is not having a baby, his wife, wife, but

Kyle Mountsier  10:15

our family is welcoming a baby into the world. Yes. Yes. So that's, that's that's coming around in our lives and it's changing our na da schedule up just a little bit. So I won't be on ground as as, as an in the trenches with Paul. But because we've got we're a little bit ahead of schedule. So it seems. And if you are a parent, you know what all that means. So we won't go into detail

Paul Daly  10:44

about this nine months ago, Kyle, but when we didn't even know we were going to be doing automotive stay. We had no

Kyle Mountsier  10:50

clue this was gonna be a thing, right? We're like, oh, nada, we'll figure that out. Not a problem, right? Oh, we're getting a big thing.

Paul Daly  10:58

Exactly. Like Yeah, about that schedule thing. So it'll be great. It'll be great. But I think we're gonna have I get a lot of congrats coming into the live stream now. But here's the deal. Um, it doesn't matter, right now, because we pivot, and we have really great microphones.

Kyle Mountsier  11:15

That's cool microphones, like I want to get, I'm gonna get one of those microphones. I'm just gonna hold it for the live stream everyday right here, just sitting in my office next to you.

Paul Daly  11:26

And so, but that's it. You know, I don't want to do another segue. But uh, Brian Davis says, We need to go Kyle, you need to go look at car washes for a minute. Take a breath. I don't know if anybody knows this. But car washes are by far my happy place. I love car washes so much.

Kyle Mountsier  11:42

No doubt, actually, the car wash. You know. So at the dealerships that I worked at, we had the Broadway car washes, which are kind of an industry standard. But man, they're expensive. The upkeeps Intense having a great local rep, there was actually some conversation on clubhouse this morning about it, like making sure that you can execute because it becomes a value proposition for the dealership. So once I remember so often, it's like, oh, but I couldn't get my car washed hands like yo is 28 degrees out in Nashville, we ain't got we haven't got enough salt for that, right? And like people get attached to that. So getting a carwash for your dealership is not just like a sign up for that lease, it's like there's a whole lot of more elements that come alongside that. So just a random,

Paul Daly  12:24

there we go. I was in New York, we love we love car washes, I love them just because it's like, there's colors, like cars clean on the other end. Um, let's talk about what we're actually doing for the show. So yeah, in the effort to bring everybody in and around the show. We, I mean, we don't most people can't go right there, a couple million people that are working in and around this industry and only 30,000 get to go. So that means for the vast amount of the rest of everyone who cannot go, we wanted to make sure we could produce for you a very fun and easy to watch way where you can feel like you're part of it. So here's a little little thing we're gonna do, we're gonna run it, we're gonna be on the ground, we're gonna be in the studio, we're gonna have teams editing stuff overnight, actually. So we're gonna live stream, we're going to be producing social, social media content videos, we're gonna be there goes my mic, we're gonna be producing, producing audio content, articles, our regular email is going to be a digest. So automotive State of the Union is trying to bring you the digest and the fun stuff, and a little flavor from the show. So it goes like this. On Thursday, when everybody gets certain shows. There's a JD Power automotive event starting in the morning. There's the Automotive News retail forum, starting at noon. That evening, there are a few other things opening party the AWS awards. So we're gonna do several live streams on Thursday. And I'm going to try to bring you content from all of those events. So and just give you a taste and start to go. Friday morning. There's the ribbon cutting, we're be live streaming from that we want to show you so like you can actually be there and attend and not see it and or not see it a day or two later. Their time Dealer of the Year Award, which is a big deal, and we're going to be on the floor, interviewing dealers, interviewing vendors. You know, just bringing it bringing the heat and fire if there's anything you want to see. Let us know. On Saturday, more of the same they're going to install the new nada Chairman Michael Alford. They're going to be putting him in Michael Strahan. I don't know. We'll try to get Michael straight hands. I don't think

Kyle Mountsier  14:24

Cirillo might know I'm actually speaking of just the just some shout outs that we asked her out way. We a good friend of ours. He's been on the podcast before Michael Cirillo is going to be hanging out where I can't be with Paul. So he'll be he'll be jamming around doing some interviews engaging with the automotive State of the Union crew there so shout out to Cirilo for getting on the fly and being ready to do that. Also shout out to a few partners that are making this possible cyan digital effective and auto phi have made it possible for us to go live with all the slides. to bring everyone to the table so signed digital crypto company bringing crypto to automotive, effective many no who are the advertising arm of Comcast and our deep in automotive moving away from linear to, to to a more connected TV experience and then auto fi really challenging the FinTech space and automotive with actually a massive announcement yesterday, a big old, a big old investment round from groups like Santander and other banks that are that are pushing into to utilize OEM. So lots going on in that world, but we just want to thank those people. For for, for putting in. And giving us the opportunity to do this for the rest of the industry this week, without

Paul Daly  15:45

a doubt, without a doubt, and we'll try to get Michael Strahan. I mean, like, I'm hearing it, but But still, if anything's gonna lure him over, I think that this microphone flag that I have, he's gonna be like, I want to talk to those guys.

Kyle Mountsier  15:59

I'm gonna talk. Yes.

Paul Daly  16:00

They seem like the real people. Yeah, okay. not hating on the Wall Street Journal. Hey, if you're going and you're a part of the Wall Street Journal, press team, I just want you to know that I'm a subscriber. And I'd love to.

Kyle Mountsier  16:12

He's a savvy business person.

Paul Daly  16:14

I have $1 A month because I took the Father's Day special. So good. Let's talk about at least one piece of news today. It came out that the numbers came in from the used car market last month, the February February numbers, actually pricing values dropped for the first time since last August. Isn't that nuts 2.1% down indicating probably a little bit of what everyone's kind of expecting is going to happen, which is the prices are going to start to but remember when we felt that way in August, right? Yeah, no,

Kyle Mountsier  16:47

there was there were some downturns back. I mean, there's been a couple of times in the last two years where it's kind of made that dip and then rebounded. And we're already seeing at least in the dealers that we talked to this kind of rebound in March of a fast start to March. So we may we may immediately see a change. Right back in

Paul Daly  17:05

August, we were we were thinking, you know, okay, this is kind of the beginning of the end. Right, everybody? And then look what happened. Nope. Right back up. And now with everything going on with supply in Russia and Ukraine materials, chips, right. Who the heck

Kyle Mountsier  17:19

Well, oh, you know what, we talked about this with Alex Vetter when we had lunch with him a few months ago, how automotive a lot of times looks towards it looks toward real estate and real estate, vice versa. And we're starting to see shifts in real estate, actually was reading some articles this morning, where interest rates are dropping, people are coming to the market, again, inventories getting removed. And so that, that we're probably going to see that same stuff happening in automotive, because interest rates impact automotive buying the same way that they do in real estate.

Paul Daly  17:48

So yeah, it's gonna be crazy. We can't count on anything except more change, which is cool, because it gives us something to talk about. You're going to talk about change. Well, we're in the right business. We hope you join us for the NADA show. hope you tune in tomorrow. Go to ASOTU nada.com. We'll see you there.

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