Episode 18 – Ashley Cavazos and Shaun Kniffin of NCM Associates

In this episode of the 100 Marketers Project, we’re joined by Ashley Cavazos and Shaun Kniffin of NCM Associates to unpack what’s really happening inside dealerships today — and what leaders need to pay attention to next.

Both Ashley and Shaun bring a unique perspective to the conversation, having previously served as marketing directors inside dealerships, giving them firsthand experience with the day-to-day realities of dealer operations, internal challenges, and performance pressures. Now at NCM, they work closely with dealers across the country, offering a rare blend of practical, in-store experience and high-level operational insight.

This episode is a must-listen for dealer principals, GMs, and marketing leaders who want clarity in a noisy market — and practical insight into how the best-performing stores are adapting.

Key Topics:

• What NCM is seeing across dealerships nationwide right now
• The biggest operational challenges holding dealers back
• Why performance problems are rarely just a marketing issue
• The growing importance of alignment between marketing, sales, and fixed ops
• How economic pressure is forcing smarter, more disciplined decision-making
• Where dealers are overspending — and where they should refocus
• Why accountability and process matter more than new tactics
• The role of leadership in driving sustainable dealership performance
• How data should be used to guide decisions (not just report results)
• Common mistakes dealers make when reacting to short-term market shifts
• What top-performing dealers are doing differently today
• Advice for dealers navigating uncertainty in 2025 and beyond

This episode is a must-listen for dealer principals, GMs, and marketing leaders who want clarity in a noisy market — and practical insight into how the best-performing stores are adapting.

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Contact Ashley: ashley@dealeromg.com and lets get your opinion out into the world!

Transcript

We are on a mission to talk to the 100 leading marketing minds in the automotive space. I'm Andrew Street, owner of Dealer OMG. Matthew Davis here. Why are we doing this? Well, we like automotive.

We like marketers, and we like retail automotive marketers. Our goal here is to give you the insights into what these leading marketers are thinking, planning, and doing.

Most dealers are only looking at their marketing from inside of their store, where today's guests that we're talking to look at the dealerships marketing across thousands of stores. We've got Ashley Cavazos and Shaun Niff Niffen. they're former dealer side marketing directors who now work with marketing leaders nationwide through ncm associates they see what works what breaks and what people are repeating over and over that are mistakes We're talking about leadership, branding, twenty groups, and why not every marketing problem can be solved in a spreadsheet. This is Hundred Marketers Project. I'm Andrew Street. Enjoy this conversation with Ashley and Shaun.

it is really a pleasure to be sitting down with both of you guys. And I know you both have had a lot of experience working as a marketing director on the dealership side, like with dealer groups. Is there a common thing that you feel like people underestimate about being a marketing director at a dealer group? Niff, take it away. We'll get to Ashley. Ashley, you get to go after Niff. I'll let Ashley go first. I think for Niff and I have very similar backgrounds, which is why I think we hit it off so well. For us, when it comes to being a marketing director, we're wearing many hats, as I'm sure y'all have heard on this project you've been working on. But it's not just It's not just marketing, right? It's like, oh, wait, you know, technology, can you help with it? Oh, wait, you understand how the phones work. So let's work with our phone systems and you understand leads. Can you help with lead handling? And eventually this role encompasses like marketing director, CTO, BDC director. And at the end of the day, you're all still one person, right? But it's great because the positive to that is you have influence on so many different departments as well. So it is a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a headache sometimes. But at the end of the day, you're also like, wait, hold on. These are the departments. These are the people I can influence and how I can help them out. versus just marketing in that aspect, right? Yes. And empower them to help you. Well, I think the other thing, too, is that in my digital groups, we're always telling them to be operational, meaning that because you have an impact on the organization, you're not siloed, you're coming into this thing and everything you do has an impact downstream from the decisions you make. And as BDC internet sales managers, sometimes they have to be aware of what's happening upstream from them, which is the marketing piece. So that's sometimes why you see them wearing dual hats. They'll be marketing directors. They may start off as internet sales managers and then become marketing directors. But the idea is they understand the whole operation because it all affects the bottom line. It affects the financial statement, the variable selling gross, cost per sale, cost per lead, things like that. We all understand those metrics. And now that AI is being introduced to a lot of this, A lot of marketing directors are feeling very overwhelmed because AI is so broad based in the dealerships that the DPs and the GMs are asking like, well, what do you know about all of this and how can we affect our groups? And NCM has started some AI, twenty groups, but they're complete operational understandings. What we're doing in our digital groups is we're bringing AI into this with our good friends at Reunion Marketing and we're creating AI workshops because they're specific to marketing. And we've already had one of those and it went four and a half hours and we didn't even get to see the end of the runway. There was so much to talk about. So I think that's another thing, too. But I think the underestimation of all this is that is that your marketing teams can impact the entire organization and they tend to get they tend to accept the the the honor of helping a dealer out. I remember talking to John Melchenko after I left and he told me, he said, pay me a massive compliment. He says, and if he says, I never had to worry about you because you had the autonomy to do what you needed to do. you had great relationships with the gm's you knew what they needed and if you didn't have an answer to something you'd go figure it out and that's the kind of autonomy that most marketing directors can appreciate because they get things done underneath that they're not they're not going to be operating underneath the thumb of someone they just want to be able to go get things done but i think the underestimation of that is that the roles that that actually i'm played in these dealer group environments is we did everything and we had to be friends with everybody and we had partners to help us get this thing done. And if we didn't know how to get it done, we knew who to call. That's right. So both of you have run marketing at dealerships and now you're both at NCM and Associates, like just absolutely one of the best organizations, especially when they got David Cain. They were good before that too. When you're putting that marketing director hat back on, what was it that was different when you went from just thinking about yourself and your one store, your one group with those kind of like almost blinders on to when you were sitting down with twenty others? Ashley, I'll start with you. Well, I'm the newest to the team, right? So it's been, oh my gosh, we're still less than two months into this role. So I'm, I'm still like acclimating over, but what I'm really excited about is taking all of that knowledge, right? I've been in automotive retail for almost sixteen years now. Um, and so being able to take all of this experience and like you said, Matt, like sit in a room with, you know, your dealer clients with your twenty groups and help them, you know, kind of guide them in piecing together the puzzle and, and sharing that knowledge that, you know, we've been fortunate to have. I've been fortunate to, as Niff said, like having marketers think operationally, like I've been fortunate to be on the variable ops side of things to be on that, on that team. And, and so just being able to guide our clients through that I'm excited to stretch that reach of connecting. Like my, my favorite thing is connecting people together, right. That might help each other in some facet. Um, so whether it's helping another dealer connect with, you know, a dealer that's piloting of that's already gone through the aches and pains of, you know, launching something new and it's like, Hey, maybe you should talk, um, to NIF, right. Cause NIF has worked on converting, you know, his data into CDP, like whatever dealer clients you can, but also technology. I love staying ahead of technology. and seeing what's going on with our partners or vendor partners. Like we had a great call earlier today with a new buzzword AI tool that's coming out. But being able to see how that can help, you know, our clients out there and helping them get ahead of things because gratefully NCM has a vast network of clients and dealers that are accessible to them that may not have the network that we've been fortunate to have, like being able to know you guys, right? Not everybody knows Matthew and Andrew. So just feel really fortunate and excited to be able to connect people with each other to find the solution we're looking for. Yeah, I would only add to that a little bit more than, you know, we do get to see a lot of the emerging tech, which is cool. But one of the things that I think benefits us is that when we go into dealership environments or we go into an OEM environment where dealers are present, because we've been dealers for so long, other dealers tend to pay attention to that. They go, oh, you're one of us. Like, yeah, I've lived I've lived your pain. And, you know, we work on those bank holidays and we work weekends and we were always on call. So it creates a level of relatability that I think is the dealers have come to appreciate. But you know i think um you know when ashley and i first started talking about this we sort of reached that same point in our careers where we're like and it's funny because i don't know if you know but on linkedin i have a thing i'm hiring i'm trying to build the team and the next one behind ashley is who we're recruiting for right now and i've had some great conversations with people who are sort of experiencing that same thing. They're like, you know, I've done the dealership thing, but I really want to figure out what's next. Like, how can I go impact the industry as a whole? Because when you're tethered to a dealer, that's fine. And we have a responsibility to that dealer and we always pay homage to that. But when you're ready to go to that next level where you said, what can I do for the industry? That's a whole different feeling than it is when you're just working for a dealer group. Different mindset, different motion, different everything. Yeah, it absolutely is. Yeah. And it feels like it can be a graduation too in your career from one phase of working in it, in the trenches, getting a ton of skills to like finding a way to start giving back to the industry. Yeah. And being very relating to like, oh my gosh, I've been exactly there. Like in my observation, from working with tons of marketing directors, it was a lot of times like the IT person that would set up the new laptops and desktops and get people plugged in with the CRM and show them how to use it. Then they're like, okay, digital's becoming more and more important and I don't speak this language. Can the IT person who gets computers be the marketing person was a lot of the role. And now it's kind of pushing back to like, okay, marketing person that we hired with these marketing skillsets and overseeing and managing vendors. Can you help with some of the IT stuff? And now it sounds like a lot of the marketing directors are being positioned as the person to bring the AI to the table when we're figuring out our next move. Yeah, we're hearing a lot of that. I know when I was in the role of marketing and technology director, I had everything from procurement to IT support, network support, phone support. I mean, it all relates, right? Marketing and technology tend to just go together, you know, because you have technology on the website. It's true. You had chat and, you know, obviously had to make sure CRM was working and things like that. But marketing and tech are definitely joined and married together. Well, and then you add in the other piece of that puzzle, which is data, right? And analytics, because a lot of people think marketing is, oh, well, you're, you know, you're just talking with your third parties and making sure we're in marketplace and, you know. Put some paid ads out there, sprinkle some social media. Yeah, you almost need a degree in automotive analytics in itself, right? Beyond Google Analytics and everything else that plays into that. So then you also become the data person of figuring out what does everything look like? What does the ROI look like? How are we falling in? know when we're looking at our you know our gross to net to spend and everything and that falls into that i don't know how many times i've sat meetings where you know we're all creating a spreadsheet and we've got like columns all the way to double z if not more right and and we're that person working you know working through and trying to piece together that story of you know what is the data telling us without having data analysis paralysis. Do all of that and then the clock resets to zero at the start of every single month. Yeah, zero to zero. Yeah, I think I think that's one of the things that we've been really trying to implement with our digital twenty groups is the fact that because of these AI workshops and and David Steinberg said it best from four eyes, he said AI came to lunch and clean data was on the menu. And a lot of dealers don't realize that yet, but we're trying to We're trying to, you know, propagate that message throughout the industry saying, look, you've got to have clean data because AI works best when it's in when it's working with accuracy. And with all the actually are you going into twenty groups yet and moderating? So you're going to be doing. Yeah. So I'll be moderating. I'll be training. in consulting and dealerships. And then I'm also in the process of getting certified to teach at the Institute. So a lot of exciting things happening, but we did work on a, I'm really excited. Niff and I are kicking off a brand new Twenty group. It's Twenty M Four for marketing leaders and content strategists. So I was fortunate to meet Niff as a founding group member of Twenty M Three, which was the first marketing director group at NCM and we've learned a lot in the two and a half years that we've had that group and it's very data heavy right as we're talking about data and so what we'd like to do is now branch off into twenty and four which is really focused on Brand branding content. You know, what is your strategy? Like bring bring your ideas, bring a campaign you're building to the group and let's discuss it. Right. Like let's have a think tank. of actually talking through your strategy together as well. I mean, obviously you're still gonna have some data in there. That's not, you know, that's never not gonna be a thing, but we wanna be really focused on, you know, somebody who has an internal agency or they're a CMO. If you're a content manager, director, right? This would be the, the twenty group for you talking about AI and how is that gonna play a role into building your content as well? niff what are the problems that you see showing up across almost every single group regardless of market when it comes to marketing um well i think the landscape has changed i mean uh i think one of the best studies that we've seen so far this year has come from our friends at clairvoyant cox automotive where They were talking about the attribution. They were also talking about the fact that I think a lot of dealers are starting to realize that they can't hide behind their SEO anymore because the customers are now shopping the experience, not necessarily the brand. The bots are doing the shopping for them, but customers are literally typing into the chat engines now and saying, hey, what's it really like to buy a car from this dealer? Yeah, you did it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of dealers are starting to realize like, oh, my gosh, my dealer rater pages are relevant. I haven't touched them in ten years. What's right? What's what's being said about me on things like Reddit and how are the Google profiles? But that is what's really starting to to show its face now. And dealers are being caught off guard a little bit by that, by like the fact that. you know and what is the geo asking for we always we always laugh like aio geo i like ario speed wagon But I think that's the thing that people are starting to realize is like, oh my gosh, I can't just say that I'm the best. My customers need to say that I'm the best. And so we're helping dealers understand that because it takes a lot of heavy lifting. And that's one reason why we felt like M-Four, it was a good time for M-Four because Those groups that have internal marketing teams are probably got a little bit of an edge against those who are probably just using agencies. Now, I will say my days at Germain, I was blessed because I had an agency that worked with partners. So like my agency worked with you all, but they also work with our DPS or excuse me, DPS, our CDP team. So you need to get partners working together when it comes to that kind of stuff. But that's probably the one thing that's really become quite apparent is you better make sure your customers are having a good experience because you just can't say we're the best. You got to be the best. Yeah, go into OpenAI or Gronk or any AI platform and ask them. I'm looking for an X brand, whatever your dealership is. I'm looking for a Ford. What's the best dealership in my area I should buy from? Like, see what it says, right? And see where you are in that mix. And I think you'll learn very quickly, you know, what you might need to work on. Or maybe you're doing great and you are, you know, the first answer that comes up. But also look at your analytics. And we did a really cool practice of this in that Marketing Director Twenty group last month in Savannah where Ron Zimmerman from Rairdon walked the whole group through how to set up your group channel for A.I., and you can see what your visits to your site look like coming from different AI platforms. And it's very eye-opening, which I had started tracking that in my time at Demontron, and I had started to see over the last six months that I was getting more visits through the AI platforms. But I think those are two takeaways that I'd love anybody who's listening or watching to. go do go, go search yourself in AI and see where your dealership falls in and then check to see what your visits look like in your analytics platform and see how that's increased over the past few months. I got a question for you guys. How do you feel like AI is going to impact social media when it comes to dealers? Because we hear a lot of it the other way, but how is it affecting you all? From my experience right now, it's been accelerating the amount of content we can get up. And it's writing great copywriting better than we've hired like the best journalism students from Iowa, University of Iowa, somewhere where they have a good journalism school. And for AI just to understand what our dealers need and be able to create content's been really impressive. uh looking at data too and just being able to quickly tell the narrative of what we're finding and make suggestions based on what's performing well what's not performing well what ad set what creative looks the best and then what i'm experimenting with right now is the speed to lead so as soon because like all of the dealerships we've worked with there's a bad taste in their mouth it seems like with facebook leads So we've gone through two factor authentication and just doing it to people who visited the website, asking them additional questions. Like, do you have a trade in where they have to manually put in stuff? But what we're finding is, you know, we can move that conversion rate to an appointment from one percent to maybe eight percent, which is moving, but it's still kind of like disheartening for a lot of people in the BDC. So now I'm looking at just like, can we take a lot of automation and be able to message people through SMS, through email, through voice calls, and I'd be curious to hear what you guys are hearing with this stuff too, to help get that lead closer to becoming an appointment or make the appointment for the dealer without them having to get their sleeves rolled up with their BDC or their salespeople even worse. That's something a fellow Vendor Twenty group, Stella, has been working on, and they've got some stuff that does that type of thing. It doesn't help you so much, Andrew, but definitely, well, maybe it would if you're working with the dealers. Yeah, set me up. And what are you guys seeing? Like with... The dealerships that are seeing the most impact from using AI, there's so many different directions to go with it, with data, with responders, with just popping up in AI platforms. What dealers are seeing the biggest impact, or not which dealers, but what are they doing that's making the biggest impact with AI, you think? Well, I'll speak first on this one. I think what dealers are starting to experience, and we've actually had to modify our mystery shop process a little bit too, because our mystery shop process only measured the first email response. And we said, we need to put a measurement on the second one, which is actually the dealer. So dealers now are becoming aware like, oh my goodness. And I think long-term follow-up using AI is becoming a little repetitive and it doesn't really create any sort of opportunities to add creativity to it because it's still the same message. Are you still interested? Are you still in the market? Do you want to test drive? And it doesn't mix it up a little bit. So what we try to train our dealers on is like go to AI and find something about that vehicle that the customer inquired on and send it to them in a separate string via text or even possibly email, but send them something that they didn't expect. Right. Create some value in the fact that you're trying to help them land their next vehicle. So I think that's a big part of what we're trying to get dealers to do is use AI for its creative content that goes beyond just what an AI templated email response goes out. Because I think that's working fine, but until AI catches up with what the customer experience is, what they're going through, I think we're going to have this repetitiveness that customers won't find value in. But I also think you've got to be fast to the market now, too. Not to mention Dave Steinberg's four eyes report from earlier this year, he had eight million leads surveyed over six months. The closing time now has gone from fifty nine percent. Last year to now, leads are closing seventy two percent of the time in three days. I mean, it's it's really becoming compressed. That's fine. And then it's the, is it AI that has helped driving that the efficiencies is, or is it something else? I don't know if it's necessarily AI, but I think if you do what we teach, which is a phone call within one to two minutes, then an email, then a text or email, text phone, then a text message, then email. I think you have a better chance of engaging with the customer if you get them on the phone within one to two minutes, which creates a higher engagement rate, which creates a higher closing rate. And a lot of dealers are still texting first or emailing first, and they're getting caught up in all that follow up from all the other dealers and they're not effectively able to connect with the customer. But believe it or not, the phone call within one to two minutes is probably one of the best engagement tools that is out there in the marketplace. And we see the data and it indicates like you're going to close more business if you can just get the customer on the phone, use email to communicate the details, use text to send the video, walk around. And get the customer engaged, create a really quality shopping experience. And I think people will continue to do more business that way. Well, if you can get that phone call, because what you'll also get pushback on your sales team on sometimes is like, well, we call and they don't answer, right? Like, they're not answering phone numbers, they don't recognize. But the key is, and I think this is a piece that I've seen over the years and in these mystery shops and dealerships we've been in over the past few weeks is, A salesperson will try just one tactic and then they move on to the next opportunity or the next follow-up task or they get distracted, right? And the key is really hitting them like one, two, three, bam, right? Like do the phone call. They don't answer, send the text message. They're more likely to answer that text message because they were looking at their phone when you called them. So even if they don't answer the phone, they're like, oh, that was Ashley that just called me from the Ford dealership I just inquired on. let me respond to that text message or call them back. But you can't just like, well, let me call them or let me text them. I'll wait an hour and I'll try the next tactic. Like you really have to hit them. And, you know, to your question, Andrew, too, like where is AI falling into that? It's the key is engagement. That's ultimately, you know, what AI is really helping. What I've seen, you know, increases on is engagement and opportunities in these leads, And so when that salesperson is now getting in front of that lead, they have some type of idea of what's going on with that customer and they can follow up or they should follow up exactly where they left off with the AI conversation. And then where you differentiate it is like Nif mentioned with the video, right? If everybody's so accustomed to what's going on virtually, well, how do I set myself apart? send a video. Like, even if it's just yourself really quick, getting a face of the name, and then you go out and you do your walk around later, but get a video out to that customer as soon as possible. Yeah, the phrase we like to use was mastering the digital handshake, right? So if you can't get them on the phone, you got to find some other way to engage them. And definitely video is a phenomenal way to do that. You're right, they're looking at their phone, there it is. And as long as it doesn't look like spam, like if you take a second, like, hey, it's it's matthew from so-and-so dealership like boom here's a video like that gets people's attention it really does it does yeah and google already proved that you know you increase your appointment rates by fifty percent and engagement rates increase by two hundred percent just because you sent a video and it's per it doesn't have to be beautiful trust me recent we've seen some bad ones they still work but the idea is you took the time the best ones are when they're out in the middle of a snowstorm and they're like i'm really trying to sell you a car here's the vehicle Not everyone can look as good as Andrew all the time. It's just, it's not possible. So it's okay to not look your best. I try hard. With, okay. So with the, with people responding within the first minute, that takes a oiled operations, energized sales team right there. Have you guys come across any products that have really started to unlock that speed to responding? Yeah. You said that you just talked with an AI company and like I just I keep checking in on Mia and a couple other ones that are doing like the voice conversations and able to have like legit low latency conversations with prospects, with customers. I think you got to, I mean, this doesn't require technology. I think you just got to pay attention and you got to be keenly aware that when those leads come in, you're on it. And one of our clients recently, I told him, he was like, well, you know, we were in training that day. I'm like, what's the backup plan? Because if you're not in training, you're doing something else. The manufacturer's got you pulled up, the company's having a meeting or something, but have a backup plan so that it's, I liken it to the fact that when dealerships have a receptionist and they usually sit at the front desk of the store when they're, they don't ever let that position be not stationed, right? In other words, there's always someone at the front door answering the phone, greeting customers. You would never let that happen, right? Same thing is you need a backup plan for your leads. Make sure that someone's watching it. And I think that that right there fixes a lot of problems for dealers. Just having a backup plan. One of my showroom processes was we would call that a lifeguard. So like who's a lifeguard on duty, right? Making sure that nobody's drowning. It's it's crazy. I mean, I remember snow days up in Minnesota and everybody would just go out and work on the dealership. And it's like, hold on. Somebody needs to stay and watch the leads. Who is let's do some shifts here. Right. I love that everybody wants to be out there, but let's make sure that we're taking care of what's going on online as well. I volunteer to see the marketing director right there. Yeah, that's right. Volunteering to sit inside and drink hot cocoa while everyone else is shoveling snow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can we talk about, uh, for a second? So you guys help get off the ground and you were saying it's more, uh, data driven and kind of more of the spreadsheet side and you see, you're seeing a gap that. you guys aren't really scratching into too much with that twenty group, so you got TwentyMFour launching, and what was the gap that you guys feel like you could fill? I gotta interrupt. Before you even do that, help us unpack the secret naming code structure for the twenty groups. Is it just out of thin air? Is there a science to it? Does NIF just come to you in your sleep? No, there's a little bit of NCM science to that. So the twenty stands for twenty group. M stands for marketing and four stands for the fourth group. OK, I feel like I've seen like that's like twenty point five one X Y Niner like in some of these twenty groups. But anyway, thank you for that. Please continue. I'll be quiet. No, I'm glad I'm glad you asked, because that's always like a fun, like mystery question to you, right? Like, where do these names come from? Twenty M three, twenty nine. I mean, they sound like models of Audis or Infinities or like firecrackers you can buy it south of the border in South Carolina. I don't know. Yeah, we get that. We get the M-Eighty. We'll have a party. Yeah. Yeah. That's when you guys can retire. Yeah. M three versus M four. So build is content. It's creative. It's the old school marketing. Well, and the other, the other piece of it is it's also, um, it's, um, it's all industries that supports. So twenty M three is strictly automotive, but NCM, we also have our arc division, which we acquired Spader. So we have RV power sports, power sports, Harley Davidson. And so we want to open up twenty and four to all of the clients, because there may be something that somebody is doing in RVs or Harley or some other industry that we support. I just we want to get everybody together in a room and like, let's collaborate. Let's talk through the struggles or questions that we have and and just go through um, creative reviews together, you know, what's going on. So it, it is a little bit, I don't know if I'd say like old school marketing, but it's a different type of marketing, right? We're not just focused on, on the analytics and the lead data. Um, we're looking at AI enhanced marketing, brand content, um, creative campaign, SEO, GEO, REO, bring an oreo out um you know there was a because there was a little bit of you know when we started twenty m three there's been a little bit of that discussion of you know there are some members that are really focused on that higher level kind of planning and strategy and um and they wanted to talk about that a little bit as well so that's that's kind of where where this came from um how do we fill in that gap so we're looking at like i mentioned earlier you know who are your cmos your vps of marketing creative directors content leads if you have an internal agency this would be a great group for you and it sounds like it's going to be across the board not just auto specific but it's marine power sports rvs heavy equipment Yeah. Is that typical? Sorry. What's that? Is that typical that you wouldn't have those industries kind of cross-pollinating with one another, or is this a new experiment? It's a new experiment. I don't know of the other twenty groups right now. I think right now they're separate operationally, but digitally we don't have any cross-pollination, if you would. Yeah, this is probably the first time we've actually started a group with the focus of cross-pollination, if you will, with other, the ARC, what we call the ARC business in, you know, RVs, marine and power sports and Harley-Davidson. they really do bring a new sense of understanding to this and we bring it's very mutually benefiting for them too because they they tap into some of the best minds and automotive marketing within ncm and then we gain we garner new ideas and processes and so forth but it it's going to be good i mean i'm i'm pretty excited about the fact that we're not going to be quote unquote strictly automotive think it's gonna it's really gonna help us okay because i will say this one of the things that the marketing directors in these groups like to do is to go outside the industry to garner new ideas so and that's smart right some people some industries do it way better than we do yeah it is good to have like in my experience like just being parts of twenty groups and and being in like an entrepreneur's organization it's like You think you want to be in a hermetically sealed, homogenous group of people who are just like you, who have the same size business and the same struggles and they lose sleep over the same stuff. But when you have like somebody from completely different industries that have a lot of the same characteristics where you need to have that salesperson, you need to have that lead generation, you need to stand out on social, you need to arrive in AI, you know, search queries to have somebody with like a different perspective, a different background, have a lens into you and your business can like put spotlights on stuff that, you know, somebody who's just has the same puzzle piece wouldn't see. Yeah. Fresh eyes are key. Like during my time at Trey pending, one of my favorite things that exercises we did was we would say, all right, what would liquid death do? WWLD. And we would never actually go to the extremes that they would. And then we would dial it back a few notches. But that was always the thought exercise. Like, all right, let's look at B to C and the craziest example we have there to try to pull something new and different and exciting forward. Yeah. And I think, too, one thing that we've got to do as automotive marketers or NCM and twenty group members is is realizing, too, that there's other industries and other markets we can serve. One of the ideas that actually got served up to me recently was a B to B business model for twenty groups, which the vendor twenty group sort of operates in that premise. But imagine a twenty group that did, you know, marketing, marketing directors who were selling to businesses within the automotive landscape. That could be another sort of area of opportunity. And look, I think the important thing to keep in mind with our twenty groups is this is the agenda which is established by the executive committee. It is a nice serve and actually serves as well at the will of the twenty group. Right. But the idea here is that. They come together three times a year to talk, to build on their relationships, to share ideas. And that's the important part is to get them talking to each other, to share ideas. And the attrition rate for our twenty groups is really low. And I think it's because of the relationships that are formed, the bonds that are had, the communication they have in between the meetings and they really lean into that for ideas. Like, hey, I'm experiencing this. Hey, I'm using this vendor. What do you think? Is there any other vendors in this space? So it's the idea of just not to be siloed, but to expand the horizons, go, wow, I had no idea. And they take that street cred and they use it to leverage it for their own partnerships. Yeah. It's just, yeah, it's good to have like an opportunity to push away from the dealership too and just go off campus for a minute and hear what people are doing that's neat. And every dealership that we work with, so like DealerOMG is my company that's just focused on social, so many dealers are starved for coming up with the good content too. And we can help by giving them a script that has a hook and a story of why come right now and the call to action is to tap below right now and shoot it vertically. And here's the spaces where you don't want to have any text or creative. But they are so interested in getting it and getting that maestro inside the store that can make it happen. Do you guys have any feel for how dealers can help find that person. Like a lot of times it could be the marketing director, probably usually is, but I've seen some too, where you get somebody that's in the finance department that's twenty four years old, but gets the social side of stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think it's finding that I like to call them brand ambassadors, right, like somebody who's at the dealership that feels passionate about it. You have a Jeep dealership and somebody you know, you, you just find those people that are already doing some of that. And then you help elevate them by giving them a little bit of structure. And they're not afraid to kind of hop in and, and, and try something new. And so this could be that content creator at the dealership or it could be the marketing director or both that would be joining a. Twenty M four. Twenty M four. Yeah, exactly. Like part of, And like Nif mentioned, you know, we serve the group. So they built the agenda. We were both executive committee members and we were part of building those agendas and working with our moderator on, you know, what that looked like. But part of that agenda is going to have some live creative review, right? Bring your ideas, bring it. Let's have that, you know, round table of, you know, does this work? I've been fortunate to have some really good agencies that when I've had a brand idea, we've put it to play and we do a study on it. But before you get there, can you bring this idea to the group and see what they think? Or maybe they've done it and they can tell you like, dude, don't do that because that crashed and failed so terribly. I would be so afraid to do that. People just like, that idea is terrible. What are you doing? Yeah, probably wouldn't even get in this group. I think that you want to have that conversation and have it be no judgment. Right. Like I have this crazy idea. Tell me if it's too left field or maybe I'm comfortable pushing it. Like you said, think like liquid death. Right. Like maybe that is my brand and I can push that a little bit. And I think it's important, too, to realize that out of twenty groups comes real accountability and ROI for the dealer when they're sending someone to the to the group meetings. And one thing that we really are high encouragers of is, for example, in these upcoming meetings, we're doing these workshops with reunion marketing. And then the next meeting, they have to come back and they have to implement their best idea from what they learned on the AI and whether they did it and they have to do without a vendor. But the idea here is that you're taking an idea and actually trying to do something with it. And then you come back and then your peers will vote for who had the best idea. So I'm looking forward to that next meeting from the Savannah group. Now to their next meeting where we're saying, okay, what'd you learn? What'd you implement? And can you measure an ROI from that? So that makes it really practical. And I think people are starting to realize that our twenty groups are about working and collaborating and not about golf. Not that that's bad, but we don't get to play golf. We just get to go and rack our brains for two and a half days and we go home tired. So good. Yeah. But it is good, Andrew, like you mentioned, like get them out of the dealership, right? I think that's the best thing is like get them away from the day-to-day distraction and we'll just let your mind kind of focus on. Yeah, being able to beat ideas around with other people. I heard a great startup quote that's like, there's no facts inside the building, only assumptions. And you only figure out what the facts are when you leave the four walls of where you work and go out and put it out there and hear the feedback. Yeah, very true. Very true. Yeah. And you just get to take out your ponytail and have a beer with people that are doing what you're doing. And that's where I imagine a lot of the creative conversations really start flowing. Andrew, do you have a secret ponytail we didn't know about? I just try to think about what people do when they're not in the trenches working. I think they relax. I don't know what that version is. The pony. Yeah. Something with a pony tail. Let your hair down. So shifting gears a little bit. Oh, go ahead. You got it, Andrew. Okay. Actually, can we talk about Wocan for a minute? Sure. Yeah. What is it? What do you do? Yeah, so I mean, I think that was another kind of pivot in where my career was headed is I've been involved in the industry from this community standpoint of Wocan, Women of Color Automotive Network, which is a nonprofit founded in twenty twenty by four amazing women. You all know Carrie Wise, CMO of Lot Links. Amanda Gordon, who is the CEO owner of Gojo Auto, first black woman car dealer in Colorado. And then Erica Tiffany Wells, you all know Erica from GM at Walser Hyundai. And then Patrice Banks, who founded Girls Auto Clinic. It's based out of Philadelphia. Patrice was a, she worked at DuPont as an engineer and decided she wanted to stop, you know, listening to her technician, really understand what's going on, became a technician herself, and now has a a shop that has all female techs and has a nail salon in it and has been featured all over the globe, which is these four amazing women founded this nonprofit to serve women in the industry. And I was recently promoted to president of Wocan. So I've been working with them since twenty twenty. Super excited. We have over twelve hundred members through all facets of the industry, from retail to OEM to vendor partner. Um, banks, and we just try to give back to this community where women of color are six percent of the industry. Right. And so how do we recruit, retain, promote more women, women of color? How can we serve them? It's really tough to get out of your day to day sometimes, depending on the role that you're in, uh, you're maybe not always able to make it to conferences. So we offer a leadership academy for six months at no cost to our members. That's kicking off next month. Um, we have an awesome speaker series where different leaders come across, um, to speak to our group, people like Janelle Ross and, um, Subi Ghosh and a number of amazing women who have come and just try to connect, um, women and, and our allies as well, and build a community. to help just when you look at, you know, who's, who's your customer, right? Who is our customer in the dealership? And are we seeing more of ourselves when we're walking into the dealership? And how can we help women feel like they have a place I have been many times, the only woman in the room, the only person of color in the room. And so sometimes it can feel a little isolating, right? So trying to build that community for them. That's so good. And I saw Patrice speak at a SOTUCON two years ago. Blew my mind what she was doing there without, and then training techs and building programs all around. It's so cool. Andrew, over to you. There's a nail salon in there for the customers who are getting their car serviced. Yeah. While they're getting their car service, they can get their nails done. And she does workshops as well. So she invites women to her workshops to learn about their car. How do you check your tire pressure? How do you know when the oil is bad? It's really cool. Okay. Can you touch on the Leadership Academy real quick? Yeah. So we have partnered with Solera and Jing over at Solera, who's amazing, inspirational. Jing has had a leadership training within Solera and their parent company. and they have brought that to Wocan as they're the sponsor for this academy. Today is actually, which I know this will probably air after, but today is the last day for our applicants, but we're going to kickstart that academy next month in January. We're going to have an NADA gathering as well, and it'll be once a month. We're going to have some homework for the ladies, but they are going to get the leadership training that the Solera leaders go through themselves. That's cool. Cause it's just like, I feel like auto is not alone on this, but if you continue to do a great job at the dealership, whether you're a salesperson or a marketing director, maybe you'll get promoted to more stores or you'll get promoted to general manager, which comes with a change of roles. Like maybe you were good at this one, but now you're managing people and that's not an intuitive thing for most people. A great salesperson does not always make a great manager. That's for damn sure. Yeah, exactly. And that's really what this is. It's learning a little bit about yourself and how you are about, you know, learning myself. What is what are my attributes? What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? And what are my goals? And where does that fit into that as well? Right. So maybe I am meant to be more of an independent contributor, you know. maybe, you know, depending on what that is. But it's a really great six months. The women walk away just, I've heard some amazing, you know, life-changing stories. And then at NAMAD in Miami, we'll have our graduation. So the ladies will be able to come on stage at the whole event and graduate. And you'll get a really awesome, like we did these for last year, but we had these stoles that we made. look at that that's cool yeah a whole you know we do a whole graduation ceremony um it's really it's really special and it's really cool and these ladies have made some you know lifelong friendships out of it as well through through the bonding that they've been able to do and we have i think about sixty applicants for this class ncm needs to steal that stole idea they need to steal the soul graduate your twinning group and get the story right anyway. So as we roll, we're like rolling right in in twenty twenty six. Do you have like a marketing prediction for twenty twenty six? If I think it's going to be a good year, honestly, and I'll tell you why. I think dealers are starting to realize that Number one, they're under silver bullets. Two, they need to embrace change. And third, I think they need to realize that for, as we affectionately say all the time, is that for every pound of technology they put in the dealership, they need ten pounds of process. And that requires training. And I can't tell you the number of vendors who have called me and said, We have great software and we're putting it in dealerships where the process is not good and it's not our product that's failing, it's the dealership's process that is failing. And that's what we're here to do. I think we've hit this, the culmination of the ability to help dealers with their processes to ensure success at a point where it's most needed. And AI doesn't fix that, it's just, holding people accountable, showing them the ropes, giving them direction. And let's face it, we got a lot of people coming into the business that are not part of automotive ever, and they don't know. So we have to do two things. We have to teach them the job, and then we have to teach them about the business, because it is, It is automotive. It's not it's not clothing and apparel or shoes or RVs. It's just, you know, it's automotive. We got to learn that business. But I'm very high. I'm very up on what's going to happen in twenty twenty six. Ashley, what's your twenty twenty six marketing prediction? You know, I'm very optimistic overall. I think the resilience that we've all, you know, been able to get through to make it to today, like you look at the past few years and the ups and downs of it all, and we're in a good place. I mean, our tech stack is heavy, right? We have, what, twenty to thirty different platforms, depending on what your dealership is doing that you're in. But I think what we're seeing come together is it's not so much of Like I'm in these different tabs as we're now trying to figure out, like, how do we get everything to talk together? And that has been an exciting part of what we've had as a pain point over all these years is having to have a different platform for a different thing. And now we're actually asking the question, do you integrate with this? Right. And does it talk to this? Because we want to see that cycle come together. We want to make it easier for our teams and for our customers. And so I think that's the exciting thing for twenty twenty six and for marketing is is seeing how what's going to evolve from that as we get deeper into, you know, the CDP esque world of, you know, more. And I'm sure, Andrew, you you're starting to see and hear a lot of this, but more personalized marketing. Right. Like how are we how are we strategizing on personalized marketing to our customers? And then how are we correcting our processes as well? Because a great tech stack doesn't mean you're going to have a great process when that lead comes in. And people are asking the right questions right now and they're wanting to get better in that way. And I think like for twenty twenty six marketing trends, I think people are going to see the value of sign spinners again, people twirling the sign by the side of the road. It's the cheapest footprint you can make. No, but seriously, Ashley, I think one thing that's hopefully, and I feel that there's momentum, and it's what you two are leading the charge on with the new twenty group, and that's dealers really putting some energy into getting that content created at the dealership that feels like social media or that feels fun, that feels you know, just people shooting constantly where they're getting that content and getting to publish it and getting it out there versus getting OEM videos of somebody driving a truck through a desert when you're selling trucks in the middle of Houston. Like to have that piece at the dealership with the, you know, the service director who's been there for twenty five years and getting the personalities, the birthdays, the what people do on their breaks and all the things that are tangible that people don't see at a dealership and they don't see it with inventory ads. I feel like you guys are helping to lead the charge on that more than anybody. I'm a big fan of that, too, and that approach. Marketing is not just a lead factory. It's not just your IT support. There's so much more to it than the fact that you guys are steering that ship and pointing people that direction now. Yeah. Well, I think you can't just make your marketing spend efficient. You've got to make your operations efficient because you can spend the same amount of money and increase your closing rates by three or four percentage points and make a huge impact on your bottom line, right? we call it the one percent rule it's like take every metric you have and increase it by one percent and watch what happens to the net profitability of the store most of that comes through process improvement yeah you can go ahead and slash budgets or cut dealers or you know vendors you know and sometimes i get it that's that's it's needed and sometimes it's just that's the way some people like to do business like i'm going to cut you and then they're ninety days later they're back I don't know. I think process improvement is harder, but it's more effective. And that's the charge we're leading is process improvement across the organizations that we serve. Yeah, you got to start with great people. Then you got to have really, really great process. And then if you can bring on some great technology, some great product there, that's the formula. yeah yeah because they had spend we have we have another term called driving sheep over a cliff as you spend all this money on marketing and then all of a sudden you drive it into bad process and the dealer loses their mind because they're like oh my gosh i just spent seven million dollars on marketing and this is what i get in return for that and it's bringing that awareness to the fact that we have to go through this process improvement so those poor sheep yeah poor sheep yeah as melochenko used to say he's like either get better people or get your people better it's not an easy industry it's not an easy thing to do is to run a dealership and get all the facets and maintain profitability and come on women vendors it can't be easy fix the coffee machine do all the things if if there's somebody out there like that's a leader at a dealership or a dealership group whether it's marine or auto and they're trying to think if if ncm is a good fit to join one of these twenty groups what kind of questions should they be asking themselves and their team? Well, are you getting everything you can from your vendor partners? And, you know, who can you collaborate with? I mean, collaboration is the best way of getting things done. Collaboration is always clunky in the beginning, but man, it gets so much better in the long run. And, you know, I'd say hit us up on LinkedIn, be more than happy to answer some questions. We even have a survey that we use to help them, you know, and it takes like twelve minutes to figure out like what kind of group you want to be in. But Whether it's in a twenty group or it's in the NCM Institute or if we're coming to your dealership, there's a way to get involved. And I tell you, these digital groups that we have, I am so proud of them and the people that are in them that really make the magic come alive. And it's getting tough to get into these groups because they're full. I mean, it's I have very few openings in these groups, but that's what's exciting. So, you know, it's good when the groups are full. Yeah. Yeah, that's easy. It's a good investment, too, even if it's not the dealer to like send a marketing director and just let them know that you're committed to their career and their growth. I love this kind of stuff. Well, guys, so NCM on LinkedIn, keep an eye on Wocan for new opportunities to get into the Leadership Academy. Well, Ashley Cavazos and Sean Kniffin, people can find you on LinkedIn, I imagine. Good way to get plugged in with you guys. Absolutely. Definitely the easiest. I am complimented to finally get you on. I've talked to Sean, to NIF before, but Ashley, you've been at the top of my spreadsheet of people I want to have. Yay, we did it. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

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