What If Tier 2 Advertising Bought an Ice Cream Truck Instead?
Tier 2 co-op advertising was built for a world with a finite number of billboards, newspaper pages, and TV stations. That world is gone. This week on The Pushback, we asked the question most dealer principals think privately but rarely say out loud in a co-op meeting: if the scarcity that justified Tier 2 spending no longer exists, why does the spending still look the same?
Robots Just Broke Usain Bolt's Record. Most of Them Also Broke Themselves Doing It.
Humanoid robots surpassed the human 100-meter sprint record at this year's World Humanoid Robot Games. A number of them also couldn't figure out how to stop running once they crossed the finish line.
Stellantis Dealers Are Sitting on a Service Opportunity Carvana Just Handed Them
Carvana's expansion into new-car sales rattled Stellantis dealers when it first broke. The follow-up conversation landed somewhere more useful: every one of those out-of-market sales is a customer nobody's claimed yet.
🚗 Stellantis Dealers Say the Carvana Strategy Is Missing the Most Important Part
🚙 One dealer told Automotive News that a sales manager posing as a customer called a Carvana Stellantis store about a check engine light and was told to just take it to an independent mechanic. "That is just not what our network needs," the dealer said. "You do that, you'll sell someone one car, and you'll never sell them a car again."
Dealers Are Losing an 83% Market They Don't Even Realize They're Losing
Franchised dealers capture roughly 20-25% of maintenance and service business nationally. The other 75-80% is going somewhere else, and Rhett Ricart thinks most dealers aren't treating that gap like the opportunity it actually is.
COVID Proved the Franchise Model Works. Direct Sales Keeps Ignoring the Lesson.
Fresh off receiving Ford's Lifetime Achievement Award in Las Vegas, Ricart, now executive chairman of his family's dealership group, joined the show to talk through what decades in the business have taught him about the industry's recurring fights.
🚙 A franchise dealer wants to “skip the salesperson,” Walmart turns charging into a retail advantage, and Spirit’s internal data hits bankruptcy court.
Google Wants to Buy Spirit Airlines' Internal Data. The Real Question Is What Your Dealership's Data Would Be Worth.
Google's proposed purchase would include more than 175,000 employee records: employment contracts, tax records, crew scheduling and time-card data, emails, and even Microsoft Teams records, all intended to train AI systems.
Walmart's EV Charging Network Just Hit 100 Stores. It's Not Even the Fastest-Growing One There.
Walmart's charging network now spans 20 states, with most sites offering 8 to 16 stalls and chargers capable of delivering up to 400 kW. The retailer wants thousands of Walmart and Sam's Club locations equipped by 2030, leveraging a footprint that puts a store within 10 miles of roughly 90% of Americans.
Mark Miller Subaru Built Its Own Carvana. It Just Kept the Dealership Attached.
Mark Miller Subaru launched Promise Path this weekend, a fully digital purchase journey built by GM Chris Hudson and his team on top of the dealership's existing one-price "Promise Price" model. The pitch, printed right on the site: keep the dealership, skip the salesperson.
