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Digital Data Café on MUDDid™ at NADA2023
In this Digital Data Café interview at NADA 2023, Albert Thompson, founder and CEO of DrivenIQ, talks to Rob Mudd, Chief Futurist at Mudd Advertising, about the company, its unique approach to automotive marketing and advertising, automotive digital marketing, and MUDDid™.
Albert: Alright, here's another One Minute of Data at NADA 2023. This is Rob Mudd, one of the executives here at Mudd Advertising. Super excited. So Rob, tell us a little bit about Mudd.
Rob: Mudd Advertising has been around for 42 years. We've worked primarily in the automotive marketing and advertising space. We've got clients all around the country. We work in tier one, tier two and tier three. Primarily tier three and we love taking care of car dealers. What makes us different is probably your next question. Well, everything you see around here at NADA 2023, company's attending here are doing pieces of it, but Mudd does it all under one roof.
Albert: You know what that does leads us to the next question. What makes Mudd unique from everybody else?
Rob: Well, I'll repeat that. Whatever you see around here… the pieces that everybody does... we bring it all together under one roof. What I believe is that you need to have that primary offering because if you're not able to deliver everything you can't continuity-wise make sense of anything.
Albert: Absolutely. 100%. So, in a world where things are changing and evolving where were you in the past and where are you headed?
Rob: Where we are at is "experience meets emerging technology". We see the benefit of having first party data, right? So we have been ahead of the curve knowing that the cookies and look-a-likes were going to go away. We could see that the big tech guys were probably going to eat all the little guys below them. We believed that you'd have to have a holistic approach and find data partners that understand that we need to be able to accurately identify buyers and we'd need to attract the buyers.
Albert: What are you doing from an ad perspective, technology perspective, and a product perspective? So how are you going to take that first party data and put it into the market?
Rob: "Activation"" is the biggest keyword here. Once you get the data we can activate through email, we can activate through direct mail, we can activate through print QR codes, we can activate through DSP, uploading ingesting our first party data, and then messaging them directly, specifically, and on target.
Albert: From the automotive landscape standpoint, how do you see the automotive dealer, the OEM, and tier two... How do you see being able to offer this type of data that you're talking about to give you an edge?
Rob: So, we spend a lot of money driving buyers to dealer's websites and the national average of identifiers is about 2% to 3%. So that means 97% of the people that hit your website, you have no idea who they are. So that's what we've always known and then we met your company and you showed us the power of being able to identify these anonymous website visitors and reach out to them in the ways they want to be reached and communicated to.
Albert: Personalized marketing. 100%. We both believe is the future.
Rob: Understanding data. Understanding the ecosystems. It's not one piece. It's not two pieces. It's the whole piece, right? You got to start and end at the same spot to have the feedback loop. Without that it makes it difficult. There's always a finite market that's gonna buy a car today. It's around 2%. Similar to the 2% that raise their hand. We need to find the 2% of that 97%. To do that you got to have the right tools.
Albert: That's right. You know, we call it that "digital up". That research shopper, right? I think taking a brand that's 40 plus years, right? Taking all that expertise. All of that up and down. All that that knowledge transfer of the industry intersecting with first party data in the future is going to make you guys unique.
Rob: We've been fortunate in that we've seen four economic cycles, right? What that gives us is an ability to read the tea leaves to see what's what's going to come next, right? Zig when you need to zig and zag when you need to zag. It's that longevity. Being that we've been in the game long enough. Knowing the business. Knowing the five most important numbers that matter to a car dealer. "What I spent?" "How many prospects did it generate?" "How many did I close?" "What was my gross?" "What was my ROI?". If one company could give that to a dealer they would be happy, right? But that's very hard to find, but we can do it at Mudd Advertising.
Albert: And in the future. You guys are looking to do more work with OEMs?
Rob: Yeah, absolutely. You have got to be tier integrated. You got to be able to carry that message from tier one, all the way down to tier three. That's where the action is. If you can understand your market you can understand your customer better with first party data. You're ahead of the game because if you don't have first party data you're not going to have anything.
Albert: What's the name of this data product? How can they find it? Tell us what to look for.
Rob: We call it MUDDid™ and you can call us at 1-800-367-6833 or email us at info@mudd.com.
Albert: Thank you, Rob. Appreciate you so much. Have a great show!
