Dawn Williamson

Paul Daly: 0:02You're listening to a soda con sessions by effective live from a soda con 2023.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:08

All right, welcome back to another episode of a soda calm sessions sponsored by effective and they have been incredible partners to make sure that this content gets out into the world. And I'm actually sitting here with the head of sales development for effective, which is a Comcast company, Dawn Williamson. Dawn, thanks so much for hanging out with us today.

Dawn Williamson: 0:29

Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:31

Yes, absolutely. I've just recently kind of gotten to know you, obviously, you were at soda Con last year, and then this year as well again, but we got to hang out on a panel and I thoroughly enjoy just your approach. So I just want to say I appreciate that, you know, like, this is a moment that I get to share with you. And like, in all the craziness is just us here, which is great. So tell me because you effective is such a broad company and deals inside and outside of automotive. Can you give me just like, as you're seeing the way that the world is moving? Right now, especially from a media perspective, what is the broad trajectory give me a 30,000 foot view of the broad trajectory of where brands are heading when they're thinking about media.

Dawn Williamson: 1:20

So from 30,000 point of view, I think, the important piece, is the messaging really getting crisp on? What is the message that they want to convey to their potential consumers, getting that creative message really tight? And also thinking about how can they target their potential customer in this very noisy media landscape? Where are their consumers consuming content? What platforms? What mediums? And how do they convey their message in a concise, crisp format. So then, with tight attention spans and so much distraction, making sure that they're landing their message and resonating with those potential consumers? Yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:03

Now, a lot of times, I feel like, especially marketers, and people in media, we have this particular bent toward, like, seeing and feeling the things that we talk about on a daily basis in our regular lives. Yes. Like, when you look at media or experience it, whether that be in social media, or streaming or anything like that. What, what makes you feel good, like personally not like take the hat off? Yes, personally, what are you experiencing that you're saying? I wish more people would do that, like, is there a brand? Or is there an experience that you've been like, I wish more people would just watch what that's what's happening there.

Dawn Williamson: 2:43

Yeah, for me, personally, great storytelling is super powerful, the ability to evoke emotion, to make one pause and really think about what this message service opportunity product is going to offer and resonate with me. So I think like, again, pulling back the lens, like British Airways does a really good job of storytelling and the value of travel and meeting your family and being able to really connect people in emotion. To me, I think advertising that is able to evoke emotion and provoke one to take action. That to me, is powerful storytelling. And so video content, for me is still the most powerful medium to get a story across. So

Kyle Mountsier: 3:31

that's what I share ways

Dawn Williamson: 3:34

to help them but I was just thinking, like, you know, I'm just a person now. I think they have a storyline where there's, you know, a child, and you see kind of a black and white visual of him with his mom sitting eating a bowl of rice, and how basically, you see all the stages of his life and how he grows up. And then ultimately, he's no longer in his mom's home anymore. And he's travelled all the way across the country, and they don't have that moment. And so she pauses and looks at that kitchen table and thinks about the time and then next thing, you know, it's kind of like, okay, you know, how do you connect that human experience with taking action and so that, to me, is like the ultimate.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:19

Like, I'm getting messed up, my kids are young, and I'm experiencing that, like, I'm experiencing that commercial through you right now. And I can see how that can be so captivating to tell stories in that way. You know, so often our media messages and our marketing messages are just like, do this now. Buy this now experience this now right? Instead of like walking us through a journey that's uniquely human? That's right, right. And I think that that's it's so we see the best marketers, right? Apple does this so well, like they connect you to uniquely human experiences. That tech is just around, right? Here's what's cool in auto. I mean, Alan, I talked about this all the time, auto is connected to so many unique human experience. That's right. Right, right. You have to use auto to get to

Dawn Williamson: 5:09

to anywhere you want, right with your family, like some of the best conversations I have with my family are in the car.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:17

Right? My wife and I were always like, we got to take a family vacation because we need some conversation. Yeah, why wouldn't oh, now I'm telling every dealer, I'm like, You got to tell a commercial, you got to do a commercial about taking a family vacation and having conversations in the car because

Dawn Williamson: 5:33

you said human relationship and dynamic that's so powerful. And to your point, Otto is an integral part of everyone's lifestyle. And so how do we leverage that to really connect?

Kyle Mountsier: 5:46

I'm like speechless right now. I'm like, the British Airways connection is so key to me, I think everyone that's listening to this should go search whatever this commercial is, because I think it could be inspiration for us, because we're in the travel industry similar to those. Actually, if you look on the majority of like news and media sites, like a CNN or Bloomberg or anything like that, they actually call it autos and transportation is

Dawn Williamson: 6:09

like that. That's right. There's a whole segment just

Kyle Mountsier: 6:11

segment and it includes air travel and auto, that's right, the same time, right. And we just think of auto as like our own vertical. But if we can actually probably learn a lot and leverage Yes, from these travel organizations that are doing that. That's cool. Yeah, what? Okay, so now, now that we've gotten all touchy feely and emotional at this point, I'm about to get messed up by my kids leaving home,

Dawn Williamson: 6:32

thank you. But one, one plug that I'm going to make is within effective, we have an in house creative agency called Nimonic, where they work with dealers to tell the stories, because at the end, you know, obviously, the medium of which you get your message out there is important, but it's only as important as the creative message you build. Yeah. And so oftentimes, I think there's an over index on attribution metrics. But let's pause and see, what is the story you're telling? And is it getting across the message you're trying to achieve? Well, because

Kyle Mountsier: 7:01

like, I mean, you think about I was about to go to the data question, but it's almost dangerous. Because if you go to the data question too quickly, you forget that messages connect. And it doesn't matter who it is, like everybody will need a car bought or service at some point in their life. And so if you can, it's like, why is why does Coca Cola have an always on strategy? Right? Well, because there's a good chance that someone's going to walk into a store and have the choice between Coke and Pepsi. That's right. That's right. And so evoking that emotion at any point is important. And so I love that you bring up like, hey, we may be about placement, and we may be about ad service. And we may have data to measure and attribute and all this type of stuff. But if you don't get the creative, right, like, that's right, everyone's just gonna be annoying, and it's gonna, and it's gonna be an ad, that's a disruption to their general.

Dawn Williamson: 7:50

Exactly. It's the full experience, right from the story and message you experience to the media platforms you buy, to the metrics that you measure in the data to the experience when they enter your dealership. Right. So it all works together. And that's why I think it's a partnership, from beginning to end.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:10

Yeah, that's good. So okay, so give me a little bit because I think this is a myth that is just it's going to take years to unravel at this point. But the myth that TV, OTT streaming, linear TV, cable, any of that traditional is all extremely hard to measure, extremely hard to attribute. And extremely hard to place. Right time, right message, right person. But that's changing trends dramatically. Right? Yeah, talk us through, like how that change has come about.

Dawn Williamson: 8:43

So the advantage that we have now is, we are able to connect the dots across all different platforms. So the opportunity to leverage data insights, as you're building your media schedule on linear and follow through consumers as they consume media on different platforms, leveraging the data that you have as an advertiser, as well as a supplier like myself, where we have first party data, and merging it together to make sure that we're targeting in the appropriate environment. The reality is, there's so many mediums you can purchase. But being really strategic about how you leverage and how you make that combination is key. We've uncovered that linear combined with streaming is the ideal combination, but probably about 30% in streaming is the right amount. Otherwise, the experience does not create the value and the incremental reach that you're looking for. So very different than the past where you just had a TV spot, you didn't really know where that audience was, you couldn't leverage data. Today we have all of those qualities that we're able to leverage so that we can be more strategic about how we do things.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:55

Yeah, it's almost like linear and streaming or almost become a video it's just video To ecosystem and that's a renaming for our industry. Right in all industries.

Dawn Williamson: 10:05

It is it's now the video environment. And what is premium video mean? You know, is it brand safe? Is it long form? Is it trusted? So that's the next kind of dialogue that's happening is everyone uses this term premium video very loosely. But what does it really mean? And we really need to be smart about how we define it. So then, you know, there's a lot of clutter out there. And so you got to make sure the environments you're in the other side is tracking attribution tracking website traffic after they consume that content, are we starting to see an uptick, and now we have tools that enable us to track that as well. So it's definitely moved in a different direction. It's all good. But we still have to get the message out there because of past perceptions. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 10:50

past perception. I mean, it was preached for 10 years, like your TV's dead, because you can't track it. Because everybody figured that, you know, Google search, and Facebook was the only way that you were gonna be able to track attribution ROI. And that's just changing a changing tune. That's, I appreciate that. You're saying like, hey, as a as an industry as media, right? Because it's not just effective. It's just media in general, is now saying, like, hey, look, we have this data, and dealers and advertisers can leverage it, to understand their customer place the right message at the right time and attribute sales and business outcomes to it.

Dawn Williamson: 11:26

That's right. That's right. And anything you had mentioned earlier, when we were talking in the panel, you know, about partnerships, and we are leveraging partnerships where we need to and that I think, also in the past, folks are very, I think really reticent to include another partner. Now, if you want to leverage data insights, as we talked about auto flight, you know, that enables dealers to see what's going on in their backyard, uncovering the stats of maybe where their share is way lower, that they may not even be aware of because as you know, to come through the data is intense. So now we're bringing to the table, hey, this code, your might be underperforming. They may not even realize that and then now we could target advertising to the geographic areas that they're under shared. That was not a possibility before and for sure. You weren't getting your TV salesperson coming in with those type of insights saying this is what the insights That's right. So I think the media landscape, it's no longer a vendor relationship. It's a consultative business partner. Yep. You know, how do we grow this business together?

Kyle Mountsier: 12:28

That's amazing. That's really cool. Well, Don, thanks for spending a little bit of time with us. He got us a little emotional. We got into the details we got into the data and it was super fun. Excellent. Thanks for being here.

Dawn Williamson: 12:38

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Paul Daly: 12:42

Thank you for listening to this ASO to concession by effective if you want more content like this, you can check out our other podcasts we have a daily show called The automotive troublemaker Monday through Friday. Here on podcasts also live streamed on YouTube, and LinkedIn and Facebook. We also have a long form podcast called Auto collapse, auto collapse. And if you just want to go a little deeper and in this community, you should sign up for our regular email we put our heart and soul into it. You can get it for free by going to a sotu.com. We'll see you next time.

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