On-Star Intelligence, Tesla’s LA Diner, Brand Beats Performance

Unknown: 0:00Oh

‍Paul Daly: 0:22

final, final approach. August is almost over, we got hats backwards wearing camo shirts, they do say love people when you love cars, we have a lot to talk about today AI and Tesla and a soda con. Con the people

Kyle Mountsier: 0:36

you haven't heard? Well, this is your first day listening to the pod

Paul Daly: 0:42

must have never listened to this show in the last 45 days, because

Kyle Mountsier: 0:49

we got to hang out with, with Lou Ramirez, Lou Ramirez and Fred and Lou, Lou, car guy coffee podcast illusionary their names, they all get mixed up, because it's like, they're just the car, guys, right? The car guys in coffee. So we got to hang out with them. And they spent like 45 minutes just asking us about the event. By the end, Paul and I were so sideways excited. We couldn't even get words down.

Paul Daly: 1:17

That's true. Because we've never it's you build an event and you build this experience. And you never really take the time while you're in it to talk about it. And they were asking questions. And we were watching them react to what we're actually going to be doing at the event and they

Kyle Mountsier: 1:30

were like, Are you kidding me? I was like, really sat back in his seat and like had his job and he was like,

Paul Daly: 1:39

listen, we really set out to craft an experience unlike any other you'll ever see in retail auto but also, top top shelf for any conference. Make taking high intention from the moment you arrive to the moment you leave. And not only with great food and entertainment, and energy and lighting, but more specifically, great insights and great leaders and practitioners that you're going to learn from we're gonna talk about a session today, technician recruiting, retention and growth. You think that's a topic that everyone needs to learn about. And we're not talking about any old slim meals teaching you about this. This is yours. Yeah, we call them yes Yasmin Yaz Bogdanovich, the fixed ops director for the CEO Kia dealerships group, they are on the test, top 50 Automotive News top 150 dealers on the list. I think they're under 50. Now under you know, they've broken the top 50 He's going to be telling you what they're doing, what they're focusing on how they're doing these things. Also, Ed Roberts Have you ever heard of the CEO of Bozar Lincoln Ford, he's at the top of every list just wrote a book by Owen leadership, a master at building teams master at keeping people he's on the panel. Also Patrice Banks girls auto clinic, she's been in Time Magazine and on Jim files podcast expert at understanding what people want in a service experience in how to craft and recruit female technicians. You think that might help you actually she's working on a really cool thing that I'm sure she'll share with everybody in the room. So if you're a dealer or dealer shrewd, wants to recruit female technicians, she's got a little solution. They're working for you. So that's just one session, one of the breakout, you're gonna

Kyle Mountsier: 3:19

like kept to catch your breath from that session and a half an hour after that. You're going to walk straight in to Jesse Cole, the owner of the savannah bananas, filling up the mainstage

Paul Daly: 3:31

Oh, the guy Yeah. Who's Jesse Cole, right? Yes, the documentary star million person waiting list to go to his events and baseball games and things

Kyle Mountsier: 3:40

and if that doesn't like whet your whistle at one o'clock Eastern today, you can get to know Jesse Cole just a little bit more and which is learn at soda con. He is on the auto collabs podcast. We livestream it today on Facebook, Youtube or LinkedIn. Or you can catch it wherever auto collabs is on your podcast. We got the opportunity yesterday to hang out with Justin combo. Just an amazing conversation.

Paul Daly: 4:04

Oh yeah, he just definitely dropped several bombs in that conversation that had me you and Cirilo being like, let me write that down. Let me write this down. Because it's funny how simply his his journey mimics that of what a lot of retail progressive retail auto dealers, how they're thinking about customer experience, and what they want people to feel when they're in the showroom and how to actually approach it. I don't want to give away the the bomb drop. We'll talk about it tomorrow after the podcast launches. So look, go to a soda con.com tickets are still $100 off right now, if you want a little something extra just DM me or Kyle. And we'll make sure you get there. We need every dealer to be at this event to inspire one another to learn from one another to share best practices so that we can move the industry we're also passionate about forward and we can raise the perception elevate the brand of retail auto and consumers eyes by being great operators. Right? Doesn't that fix it first? Right You can. You can put lipstick on it all you want but unless you You're really backing it up operationally with your tech and your people. In your experience, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter because the internet exists and people Oh, man speaking people talking, or robots talking. People all that stuff. Yeah. Yesterday, GM announced they are now using Google's AI tech to enhance its OnStar safety and connectivity service. The collaboration aims to improve voice recognition, thank God, because we all know voice recognition in the worse off to provide turn by turn navigation and enable conversational responses to consumers questions. So Google clouds dialogue, flow tech, the same that powers chat bots on GMs corporate vehicle brand websites that you know, gives conversational responses to people interested in vehicles, it's going to provide all the other services in the car. So basically, they're automating all the non emergency functions to free up real people, OnStar staff to give more dedicated and immediate response to things that require human intervention. I love that leveraging two quotes here. This is from Mike Abbott, GMs, Executive Vice President of software and services, he says generative AI has the potential to revolutionize the buying ownership and interaction experience inside the vehicle and beyond enabling more opportunities to deliver more features and services. Great. He said, we can make more money with this in short. So Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian, said, General Motors is at the forefront of deploying AI in practical and effective ways that ultimately create better customer experiences. This isn't the quote. And they're doing that because they're using our thing. So the cold blooded guy says this, he says, Look, this is going to allow us to make more money. And the Google guy said they're really smart, because they're using our thing. They're using our stuff. Exactly. Yes. It's cool. Like I don't disagree with either. Hey, kudos, kudos to both of them. Absolutely.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:56

I'm still like putting a pin in it, right? Because there's because OnStar, much when you talk about OnStar and Google's AI technology that are yet to be discovered yet to understand that they can actually functionally do what they need to do. I'm still concerned that GM is sunsetting, so much of their connectivity, specifically with Apple, and I, like, I'm excited, I'm interested,

Unknown: 7:22

I'm interested,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:23

I for one want to test it out, I want to be like a personal, I want to have a personal understanding before I pass judgment on it. But I, you know, like the one, the one part of the story that makes me really happy, and you kind of alluded to it in there is alright, here's tasks that AI can handle. And here's tasks that only humans can handle that's going to free up humans to do the tasks that we need humans to do really, really well. And I think that that's where everybody should be looking to integrate AI into their processes into their technology stack to make sure that humans are interacting with humans in the best possible ways and maintaining efficiency with their time. And so if this fills that gap, and does it well, then it's going to be super successful.

Paul Daly: 8:09

I love it. Speaking of being super successful segway. It's like a golden touch is, well, Tesla was successful in receiving official city approval to build a supercharger station in Los Angeles that will not only serve as charging but it also happens to be an old school diner and drive the movie. By the way, the station potentially named diner and drive in movie supercharger. I guess that's kind of a I'm disappointed Tesla needs to come up with a better name for that. And I'm sure they will. They'll have 32 supercharger stalls, a retro style diner with rooftop seating and two movie theater screens showing the top 100 famous movie clips, right? You can't show a whole movie, you're only charging for 30 minutes. So the top 100 Everyone's going to salute the best thing initially presented last year in a Twitter post. The project was approved earlier this year on July 18. And the initial grading expection was just completed earlier this month saying this thing is about to start going up in West Hollywood. You know, it's part of Tesla's ongoing effort to you know, expand their Supercharger network. Currently, they have 17,000 Charging stalls across 2000 stations in the US. And now that everybody else is invited to the party, that diner if I'm sure the food will be good, and the top 100 movie clips are going to be great. And if the charges are fast, here's what's really happening with Ford. Here's what's really happening is Tesla found out about Patrick a bat. And they were like, I get it. I see I see what we got to do. I literally thought the story was that I literally thought of this story when like thought of him.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:49

I mean, this. We've been talking about this for probably two years now ever since we started this podcast is that the integration of multiple business verticals into everything that auto retail and auto servicing and auto maintenance is doing is the opportunity. And we you have to listen to the Jesse Cole podcast today. He blew our minds yesterday in this in this idea that what if we created spaces that nobody wanted to leave, like, think about this, people are going to be so like, enjoying their eating and enjoying these top movie clips, that they're just going to stay there longer and their car will get charged.

Paul Daly: 10:32

I bet there's going to be a way to buy a Tesla while you're there just

Kyle Mountsier: 10:36

antithesis to speed. But it's it's it's like being so pro at experience. And I think that that's where like my mind is shifting on speed versus experience. There are some people that will need speed in all of these facets, right, whether it be maintenance or charging or buying. But that experience can trump that. And

Paul Daly: 11:00

right It depends. It's what you're doing while you're there. Right when it comes to tech, your website experience your your online like that's got to be rocket lightning fast because everyone has something to do but once they get there. The reason it feels long is because what they're doing sucks. Yes, right. That's right. Jesse talks about people leaving baseball games early. Right? They usually leave because it's short before it's over because it's long and it's slow. And then he talks you down

Kyle Mountsier: 11:27

with like, Buy me some peanuts and bat cracker. Like all the time is over. You know

Paul Daly: 11:32

how to work in the morning? No, and then Jesse goes on talks about what they did that they can barely get people to leave. Right and he's like, what does it look like if people don't want to leave? How do you make your experience longer because it's so good. total mind game showed a mind game. Speaking of people not wanting to leave? No. People wanting to leave the home.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:52

Really interesting new article from this Airbnb CMO, Hiroki OSI. Basically, over the last couple years, they have parted ways from what they're calling performance marketing, which is what many of us do in the marketing spectrum and doubling down on brand. they've shifted their budgets to big bold brand campaigns focusing on the core of what Airbnb is about. Core hosts primary homes, guests the experience, the new strategy involves developing highly specific features and tools that set its product and experience apart, such as Airbnb categories and communicating differentiators through brand first campaigns instead of performance driven buys, if you haven't actually, like as just a consumer, I've experienced the shift, right? Starting to see like experiential commercials the way that they are positioning the experience of either like renting out an Airbnb or being like getting an Airbnb put,

Paul Daly: 12:54

let me pause you for a second. Give us the 10 second 22nd break down of what is performance marketing versus brand marketing for those who might not know

Kyle Mountsier: 13:03

Yes, so performance marketing is all about clicks to sales, right? Did Did Did I did I drive high intent users low funnel low in the funnel in capturing so like in Airbnbs case, we see offers Right? Like golfers behavior is driving to offers driving to sales and direct ROI attribution brand, being much more broad campaign, filling the top of the funnel and letting the funnel drive itself down to down to the high intent users and doing like broad scope marketing on core values, brand intent feeling. And so those are there, like typically, like you can see people lean one side or the other or have a mashup of both. And the scary part with doing all this, whenever that's done is that performance marketing is kind of like it's like shots of adrenaline, right? You can see immediately real time and the and the campaigns typically can turn on and off. And you know exactly what happened. Brand Marketing, on the other hand, actually takes time to build but over time actually lowers costs and increases revenue. And so, yeah, that's so

Paul Daly: 14:21

and when you turn off performance, marketing, all your ROI goes away immediately. Your Brand Marketing has a long tail tail, because you're connecting with people like people like us do things like this. So awesome. I think it's really cool that Airbnb Sol is so effective, actually. So COVID hit, they lost 80% of their business overnight, right? No one's traveling. No one needs Arabiya. You imagine that like planning for an 80% decrease? Can you imagine? It's unbelievable. And now after they've deployed this, they've actually gotten back to 95% pre pandemic levels. Wow. So it works

Kyle Mountsier: 14:55

most profitable just not

Paul Daly: 14:57

next week. Really Oh, Wow, wow, serious stuff. So talk about thinking differently in retail auto, we've

Kyle Mountsier: 15:04

talked about this a lot of having both, you need both. But typically, the offers based things are where OEMs migrate to, they want to see your advertising because they do OEMs think lots of brand. They're pushing down the offers to the dealer, but every dealer, every dealer has an opportunity to build strong brands. And we see that all over the industry. Try to highlight them whenever we can. Real quick before it before you kind of roll out a lot of people that are dedicated solely to performance marketing and and high intent, like direct ROI attribution campaigns, like they they fear moving to brand, because if you do that, like so quickly, and don't crossfade it, you can it can be painful in the middle. And so if you're looking to move toward that, like there is this ability to crossfade performance marketing and brand marketing and move slowly over over a year and a half to two year period further and further away from performance marketing. So it can happen.

Paul Daly: 16:05

It does happen. It's not ideal is that when people are doing all over the country, we want to connect you with more of those until then it's August 30. Go to a soda con.com Get your tickets now because we want to hang out with you there

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