Spring Is Like An Old Truck

We've all had that experience, right? Turn the key and listen to the engine try to turn, give it a break, try again, wonder if we flooded it, and repeat.Until finally, the vehicle roars to life and takes us where we want to be at a speed that people 1000 years ago could never have imagined.

We just crossed 5000 followers on LinkedIn and can only credit it to the people on our team who spend their days creating meaningful content that invites people toward genuine connections. We are proud of them, the progress we have made, and each of you who are turning keys, pressing the gas, and believing good things will turn over.Keep Pushing Back-Paul, Kyle, & Chris

INDUSTRY HIGHLIGHT

Melissa Cartagena: Creativity At Scale, Boomerang, and Crystal Flip Flops At the Beach

ASOTU’s Chris and Kristi had the pleasure of sharing some time this week with AutoNation’s Senior Director of Digital Advertising, Melissa Cartagena. She chatted with us about her time at AutoNation, as well as how her past experiences have helped generate a better digital experience for her clientbase today.

ASOTU: Hey Melissa, and thank you so much for joining us today! We’re super excited to learn more about your experience within the auto industry, advertising, and business as a whole. But, let’s start with some basics — tell us a bit about who you are, where you work, and how you got started in the automotive industry.

Melissa: Sure! So, my name is Melissa Cartagena, and I'm the Senior Director of Digital Advertising for AutoNation. My team’s primary focus for the organization is performance-based marketing tactics. We run advertising across all of our roughly 300 stores that range anywhere from South Florida all the way up to Washington State. 

I've been with AutoNation for about seven years. I joined the company in 2014 to launch the programmatic display program for the organization, and then that quickly moved into the social media component. Prior to AutoNation, I worked for multiple digital-focused positions with multiple companies and multiple verticals, worked in the telecommunications industry, worked in the web hosting industry, worked in residential real estate, and then I worked in CPG for a bit as well. I actually started my career in business in general. My first job was at American Express for about eight years, that was kind of the baseline of business for me. I grew into digital where I landed an agency, and then that kind of just grew from there.

Several years ago, AutoNation was rebranding all of its dealerships to the AutoNation name and many new marketing folks were hired. The team went from a handful of people to about 80-85. And this includes a lot of different areas. For example, my team oversees performance, but we have someone that handles third-party partnerships, someone that handles email, someone that handles direct mail, television, and all of those sorts of things. Our team is pretty large, and we all just really get along well. It's like a second family.

That's awesome, we have so many questions right away! The first one being, with such an array of regions and communities to consider, how do you go about creating working campaigns for say Florida and Washington State?

Automation is really key for us. We leverage automation wherever we can to help us do everything at scale. For example, the programmatic media side, we had to leverage DCO components, Dynamic Creative Optimization components, to be able to pull all of our inventory in and be able to manage the messages, and provide the messages to the right person at the right time. There's the component of audiences and understanding who they are and what are they looking for. Then also, let's pick the right vehicle for that person and provide them the right message so that when we read them, when they come to the site, and they look through our inventory, and if they leave without taking an action, we know exactly what we need to show them. We have that whole thing automated and it’s a pretty complex program because of all the dealerships we have.

Oftentimes, we mistakenly think of advertising as a person writing words, choosing an image, and hitting post, but to scale means you really have to implement more advanced tools and develop an understanding beyond “run-of-the-mill” advertising, right?

Exactly. When you think about some of the newer things that are coming out, like TikTok for example, a lot of people are testing it, but I think the jury's still out on whether it’s effective for dealers. In our world, I'd love to be able to deploy authentic videos across all of our stores, but we have a lot of them and managing something like that at scale is truly difficult. Your content on Tiktok needs to be super authentic, so we don't want to have the same message running across every store. That's been challenging for us.

Definitely, challenges grow with the business. It makes sense. With your history of working in similar roles but for other verticals, were you able to implement certain ideas and thoughts that you gained from those positions into the automotive world?

When I first started, my direct supervisor and I were talking about running some banner advertising without me yet fully understanding all of the complexities. We were trying to do it in an automated fashion, but we had to follow all the rules and regulations associated with all of the OEM brands that we represent, AND all the laws and regulations that we have to follow by state. So, when we are creating a program for the masses, we’re also trying to customize it for a store, a market, and a state. We have to really think through all of that so we don't get in trouble. That was one of the nuances that interested me about this role versus others because it's challenging in that respect. You've really got to be mindful of multiple things.

But, there were some things that I was just like, let's just go with it! I think my previous experience kind of led me into this role to be a little bit more scrappy in certain instances so that we wouldn’t over-complicate the process to be able to market the way that we wanted to.

You've also got to be creative about how you use things like disclaimers — where they’re gonna sit, how they’re going to read. We've worked really hard with our teams internally that actually write those disclaimers to ensure that we sit within a certain character limitation and things like that because they were writing them before but it was really for television. When I came to the organization, I knew we had to start thinking differently because we do have to write those things for digital purposes.

So basically, campaigns have to follow the rules, but they also need to be effective.

Exactly, yeah. We've done a lot of trial and error over the years to figure all of that out. This is something that was developed back when we started it in 2014. It's evolved so much more than that. Even the look and feel of our creative is different now. We still have to ensure that we follow the guidelines so that we stay in compliance with partners and regulators.

Before we ask about opportunities you see for the industry, we noticed you’ve mentioned creativity a few times — are you pretty creative in your personal life too?

I used to make these beautiful flip-flops. I don't have a whole lot of time these days, but there was a time when I thought, “when I retire I am going to have a hot dog truck and I'm going to make crystal flip-flops to sell on the beach.” Crafting at home has always been something that I've loved doing.

Crystal flip-flops AND hot dogs!? We’re so in! Until then and as we look to the future, where do you see the industry going? Where do you see yourself going? Are there any opportunities that you see other people missing, or something other marketers and dealerships could try for the first time?

For the past few years, AutoNation has really grown and as our CEO says, he wants us to ultimately be the quintessential “transportation solutions provider.” We’ve got some more things brewing this year, but we also recently pulled a mobile mechanic company and a financial company into our circle, and it’s been great to work with those folks and bring them into our family.

As far as some things dealerships might be missing, the one thing that I feel like everybody has to get a handle on, is their data. The biggest buzzword of the past few years has been CDP. We're now in the stages of trying to figure that out, while others are still trying to wrap their heads around first-party data to begin with. That's going to be one thing that a lot of folks are going to have to figure out, and it's missing from a lot of dealerships.

We also have some disjointed things in our world. For example, I’m sure that the OEMs would like more information about what the dealers are doing, and I know the dealers would like more information about what the OEMs are doing in terms of data in general. So, I think there's still a lot to figure out there.

AROUND THE ASOTU-VERSE

Big Week, Lotta News. Let’s Catch Up!

Daily Email Recap:

– Volkswagen and Porche report 2022 profit growth.– Toyota dissects a Model Y.– Ford is the latest automaker to give up on AM radio.– The national average price for a new car increased by 9%.– We break down The Silicon Valley Bank collapse.– ChatGPT4 was released, and GM is getting in on the technology.– The McCarthy Auto Group teams up with Johnson County Community College to support the next generation of auto techs.– Modern Day Car Sales Group (MDCS) meet up to make dreams come true.– Shoes can be cool and weird, kinda like us.– T-Mobile is acquiring Ryan Renolds’ cellphone company, Mint Mobile.– Microsoft is pushing into artificial intelligence but just laid off its entire Ethical AI team.

Check out any emails that you may have missed on our website here!

Podcasts:

We miss Kyle when he travels, but it gives us a chance to look at the news with our good friend Todd Caputo…so that’s nice! Check out our chat about Mississippi banning direct vehicle sales on The Automotive Troublemaker!

CAPTION CONTEST

Motor Madness Week 2!

Join us for Motor Madness week 2 on LinkedIn! Each day will feature one poll pitting two classic or modern vehicles against one another until only one remains!