From Disrupted to Disruptor with Anthony Jingoli

Paul Daly: 0:00Okay, if you're in Philly, and one name comes to mind. Who is it?Unknown: 0:14

This is Auto Collabs.

Paul Daly: 0:17

Come on both of you need to name from each of you,

Michael Cirillo: 0:19

Don Johnson.

Paul Daly: 0:21

Well, that's okay.

Michael Cirillo: 0:22

Or you just didn't give any other quality.

Paul Daly: 0:26

Like, I think the craziest study, right?

Michael Cirillo: 0:28

I mean, lots of names come into my mind everywhere. I don't have to be.

Paul Daly: 0:31

Okay. And what's the if you were to personify the overall energy of Philly, in one word, what

Michael Cirillo: 0:39

would you say? The roots, roots

Paul Daly: 0:42

that okay.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:44

Nightly News,

Michael Cirillo: 0:45

you know, I'm doing I'm doing this because I know where he wants us to go like, well,

Paul Daly: 0:53

let me put you on the spot. One further. Since we're a minute into this intro. Where do I want to go?

Kyle Mountsier: 1:00

Smarty paint wants this to be at the top of the Rocky Steps is exactly where he wants to

Paul Daly: 1:05

know, you're all wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. And you'll realize this now, but Philadelphia is definitely a city that is full of people that have just grit and just just get to work day in and day out. Right? Yeah, there's some you know, even the stories that have made it out of Philly, right, like Rocky, some like the Founding Fathers, you know, a little stuff like that. It really is. Just little, little things like that. But it really the essence of Philly is really people that just show up every day. And they just keep moving forward. And they keep moving forward. And today's guests, Anthony Jingoli from Effectv. Just reminds me of that mentality. Like he's from Philly. And like, he just reminds me so of so many of the hard working people that I know from the city from growing up there. And it's like, not a ton of fanfare, right? But dedicated, consistent, keep swinging the bat day in and day out. And just for some reason, they're always standing still, like they always just have another round in them. So that's where I was going with all that gentleman.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:10

Really, the whole intro was not dedicated to Anthony, it was dedicated to Paul being like, and I'm from Philly to do I talk about

Paul Daly: 2:24

but he stayed and I one day, I'm

Kyle Mountsier: 2:28

gonna one day. One day, Cirillo is gonna be like, let me tell you about Texas.

Paul Daly: 2:34

He's gonna be like, let me tell you about Canada.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:38

Well, hey, look, with all of that said, we really hope that you enjoy this episode in our conversation with Anthony Jingoli. All right, we are hanging out with Anthony Jingoli. I'm pretty sure I got that. Right. I think I've said it on on on camera a few times now, the regional regional director of auto for Effectv. And he is actually in Philly, where we will be very funny. Thanks for joining. Thanks. Thanks for joining us, man.

Anthony Jingoli: 3:15

I'm happy to be here. I'm patiently waiting for everybody to arrive. Because I think this is going to be such a fantastic event. So it's a great city, and everybody's gonna have a great time in the city. And then they get to learn a little bit about automotive along the way. So it's should be fantastic. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 3:32

well, and what we found out is you're going to be patiently waiting for Cirillo for a long time because he just started walking that he's actually in front of a green screen. He didn't book his flights. And

Paul Daly: 3:42

he was like, this isn't person I thought it was virtual.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:48

So So being from Philly, give us like, real quick before we get into the real thing, because you know, we don't get to talk to people that are on boots on ground where ASOTU CON going to be held that often. Like if people are coming to Philly and we know that their schedule is going to be packed with ASOTU CON but if they had like one hour to do one thing, what would you recommend that they make sure that they don't leave Philly without doing?

Anthony Jingoli: 4:12

Alright, so that's a great question because there's so many things but here's what I'm saying given when everybody's coming in if they're flying in Sunday, and this is my Italian is going to come out a little bit here but everybody's staying in South Philly go to the Italian markets like a 10 block market with everything you could imagine and one from standpoint for any kind of food or delicacy from an Italian standpoint is there so it's a nice if it's a nice day, you can take a walk you can go see it Pat's and Geno's butt up against it, so, that would be that would be a good little excursion. And with

Kyle Mountsier: 4:45

that, and with that we're gonna need some new moderators and podcasters

Michael Cirillo: 4:53

I'm just gonna be you're gonna find me asleep on a bed of like fresh bread

Paul Daly: 4:58

cannolis and fresh bread

Michael Cirillo: 5:01

Only for a pillow.

Paul Daly: 5:03

That's good. I didn't know what you're gonna say. I was wondering because like, you know, obviously there's a touristy things, you know, it's like, you're gonna have them go to the Rocky Steps, you're gonna have to go to Liberty Bell, but the Italian market is literally the thing you don't see on TV. That is one of the most enjoyable parts of Philadelphia, if you want to get a handle for like, the culture and the quality of the food and like, now I want to go. Wait. It's not that far from Ciocca Subaru not that far. Field Trip, right? Yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:37

All right, well, let's get into it, I'd love to take a little trip down memory lane. Because, you know, most people when they think about Comcast or Effectv, it's kind of the kind of person over there, the team over there, or the or the company over there that everybody knows a little bit about, but not enough about, and there's, but I think getting to know the people within organizations is always a lot, a lot of help, for me at least. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about your history in automotive. Have you always been on the media side? Or has it been kind of a something that you've been around different parts of the of the automotive ecosystem? Yeah,

Anthony Jingoli: 6:17

I mean, my journey and automotive is, it's a little it's not traditional, but it's in the sense of I've been with Comcast for over 20 years, I spent a long time here. And I've moved in throughout a lot of different roles. And at one I'd started out in marketing and branding. So that's at my heart, that's what I am. But I took a role of business development role that was very focused on tier two automotive, about midway through my time here, and I got to spend a lot of time with dealers and dealer group presidents providing additional value they bought, they would buy television and use us for all the power of the sight, sound and motion. But then we would come up with other ways to push the brand out there for a Tier Two. And we did some really creative and fun things. Like we did something awesome with Toyota called Haul away hunger, where it's really their event, but we brought it to life with video, and it's about 75 tundras hadn't got Columbus Boulevard packed with food that gets delivered to Philabundance. And we would kind of partner with these groups and bring these things to life and put them on television and put them into video. And getting into that community and starting to kind of feel that was pretty powerful. And then as we kept adjusting our business model, the opportunity to get into tier three came. And it was something that I jumped at, because of the dynamics I had working with these dealers and seeing what they did in the community and what they wanted to do with their, their brand and how passionate they were not just about automotive, but about the economy around them. And it really kind of kind of drove me. So I stepped into this role in about 2017 and have been much more focused on tier three, and helping the lead our teams be a valuable solution provider to dealers all across our company.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:06

So being in being at Effectv or Comcast for 20 years. Like if people just put on a little like thinking caps real quick. You've been at a media organization that's focused focused on TV and video since before iPhones existed, right? So the amount of of change in the way that the company and maybe you even interact with advertising, or with long form or short term video must have been, I mean, you've been through all of the changes from moving to, you know, streaming services, and YouTube and OTT, and all this all these different types of video inputs that we now have in our life that we didn't have in 2002. Right? What what's been what's been like maybe, maybe talk about, like, the most significant changes and the way that you've had to approach them as an employee, like at your personal level as those changes have happened.

Anthony Jingoli: 9:08

Yeah, what's interesting about that is we I've gone in my career from being sort of the disrupter to being cable when it was on the on the common it was, you know, all these shows popping and reality TV and everybody wanted to be on cable, and our inventory was growing, and people wanted to advertise there. And we were disrupting the traditional television model. And then you fast forward and you know, TV changes, right and it becomes a different dynamic and now there's people disrupting us and and forcing us to change our perspective on things and I think that's been the if there's any one thing it's it's that you have to keep evolving and learning and I think what what Comcast does such a great job of is staying ahead of the curve on what's happening next. They're planning for what's happening because we understand what our consumers want, and we continue to pivot sort of our our cable business or video but Is this to support consumers and what their needs are. And then advertising is able to follow past that. So I think it's it's been an interesting dynamic of being sort of on top of the world, and then being the one that everybody's coming after and then having to kind of catch back up. Because we went through a phase where, you know, we had to get smarter and provide better resources, because digital came into focus and did a really good job of showing data and different things. So it's been good for us. But I've gotten to see both sides of it. And it's definitely been an interesting ride, that's for

Paul Daly: 10:34

sure. So it's like from disruptor to disrupted. You know, it's like basically that swing. So you remember that being the disruptor part. There's usually a little more ego involved when you're the disruptor, right? Like being a humble disrupter is not two things that you usually hear together. Although I think that you find a humble disruptor. And you have a really great thing. Back in when you when you were disrupting traditional media, what was the main value proposition?

Anthony Jingoli: 11:05

I think it was geography. It was it was the biggest thing. We had geography and we could bring different kinds of audiences. So it went from the traditional broadcast model was one network and everybody sees the same thing, right? Correct. Yeah. And we could now we had zone. So you can advertise in different zones, you'd have to buy a whole DMA, you could buy a smaller area, maybe just your county. So that was very interesting to a dealer who didn't want to advertise down at the shore when they were in West Philadelphia. So there was that point. And then we had all these networks that we were partnering with ESPN and HGTV Food Network that were could define certain kinds of audiences. And now it was easier to find your sort of niche customer, depending on what kind of business you were. So I think those were the things that really set us apart out of the gate. And then there was just an influx of viewership there. And then that just carried us through. So

Paul Daly: 11:55

what What lessons do you feel like you've carried through being on the other end of it? Yeah, like, now you're on the other side of it, right? And you're obviously making a real, sophisticated and savvy push, uh, you know, with digital, but where did those two things connect your experience on the one end? And now your experience on this end?

Anthony Jingoli: 12:13

Yeah, I think it's about I said a little bit earlier evolving. And learning, I think we was, we got to a point where we realized we really have to kind of lean in and figure out what we can do better, we can't just ride this sort of wave any longer. And again, Comcast was doing a lot of those things. But as an advertising business, we had to come around, come around to that and say, Okay, we have to provide more service more value. That's part of what that business development role was, it was bringing more value to dealers and dealer groups. But then it was we have to do even more than that. And we have to do it faster. We're a big company. So we had to learn how to get quick. And I think that's, that's that point of inflection of, it's not just enough to get to do more for dealers, it's we have to do it faster. And we have to do really unique things. And not only do we have to catch up, but we got to pass the curve. And I think that's what we're set up to do now. But we had to take some time getting there, but we made it through and all along, there was still a lot of value we provided. But now I think we can we can do even more. And that's that's kind of been the critical piece for me.

Michael Cirillo: 13:22

You know what I love about this? It really, it does two things. For me. It emphasizes the point that when something first comes out, it never actually ends up the way we all anticipate. So for example, when web2 was really like the bid, and we're like, oh, man, this is going to kill every type of media that came before it. The second thing it emphasizes is that given enough time, we realize that this isn't gonna kill something like TV or radio, we could just digitize it. You know, radio, isn't that a podcast and like my kids don't listen to radio, they listen to podcasts. My kids don't watch TV, they watch YouTube, they watch Netflix, they watch all we, you know, Amazon, whatever. But that's still TV to them. And it's still radio to them. So we could just evolve it but but to the point of, you know, evolving, and things not ending up you know, like I look at Radio was supposed to kill news print, TV was supposed to kill. While radio was supposed to kill the theater. TV was supposed to kill the radio and the Internet was supposed to kill it all. And yet, here we are. It looks vastly different in how we use this medium to communicate and aligning with you. But in that evolution that you're kind of talking about going from disrupter to disruptee and then maybe into disrupter again. Is there a mindset shift that needs to happen on part of the person producing the ads or creating the advertising to fit these new mediums?

Anthony Jingoli: 15:01

Yeah, I definitely I think but but at its source, it's kind of still the same thing, right? It's Sight Sound motion, you're telling a story. And that doesn't change, and you're using video to tell the story. So now there's there's much more sophisticated ways to target that story to different audiences. But good storytelling is good storytelling, a good show produced in in 1980, for broadcast TV is still a good show, it's still, you know, tells great stories. So I think there's a tendency to it. And when these things tend to come back around again, to like we saw this with, you know, everything went streaming. And people say they're gonna watch on their tablets and their phones, but we see 83% of all viewing still happens on a big screen, because we just put all those apps on a TV. And people said, nobody wants to have all of these networks. In a bundle, they just want to watch what they want. But now there's all these streaming services that go on, right.

Kyle Mountsier: 15:54

That's been my favorite new thing. someone's like, I'm a cord cutter. And they're like, Yeah, I got the apple thing and ESPN, but that came back

Paul Daly: 16:03

with Disney plus. Never watch it, but I got it, right.

Kyle Mountsier: 16:12

That's wild. That's Yes. You know, so they'll go ahead, Paul. It's gonna say,

Paul Daly: 16:19

Oh, I have to throw Michael just wanted to get his two cents into the mix. Yeah, there really is. I think that's the benefit of experience. Right, you can look and you can take a more measured step, because if you haven't been through a disruption haven't been through a major transition, right, like a generational transition once every 20 years, right, it feels like they're, the transitions are getting a little faster between technologies. But I don't know, I think 20 years is still kind of a kind of a thing, you know, and if you can kind of see through a generation, the big the big things that happen, you have the benefit of being able to measure your first step, right, without feeling the need, we see that a lot in the markets today. A lot of young investors, a lot of first time retail investors have never seen a downturn. So then when all of a sudden the market turn, there was no exposure to that. So everybody panics, right? And you get this really crazy volatility. So with experience, you do have the benefit of saying like, ah, hold on a second, let's just wait and see if he zigzags before, we have to like, go all the way in. So I mean, I just see that as a massive benefit of being through it once or twice.

Anthony Jingoli: 17:32

At this point, it was critical for what we just went through. Because our you know, there's a lot of dealers that weren't advertising as much, and we had to kind of work our way through that and figure it out. And we still are, I mean, the we consistently hear, listen, I'm not going to advertise, I don't have any inventory. And that's great. But our question now is, but do you have customers, because if you do, let's go tell the story. You're gonna need to, to be in front of them one way or another, because cars will come back, and but you need to keep your brand out there. So that's, so we're trying to kind of be sensitive to what they're going through and understand it. But also remind them that your brand is important. And you should be present even through these tough times. So that when you come out of it, you have the ability to take a little more market share, or have a little bit more brand recognition in the marketplace.

Michael Cirillo: 18:23

You know, and also, can you can you love yourself a little less? I mean, we don't have inventory. Yeah, but do you still exist? What do you mean, what are we advertising the thing a four year old knows that you sell? I just want to underscore this I just got off a call with two colleagues in South Africa. And they were they were enlightening me on the South African retail you know, industry where the German manufacturers have had an agency model there for five years, where you the lead time regardless of chip shortage, like we're talking about normal times lead time on a vehicle was six months or more. They really, you know, shone a spotlight on the importance of marketing you not the car Wow, and how it's always been that way. But here we are in the United States where we think we're the only ones experienced we are on we are at such an early phase of like, you know, inventory shortage and don't have things on the lot and yada yada yada. But what you just said made me think about how important it is that if you've put all of the the onus on the fact that you don't have inventory you are really undermining who you are as a person and why people are coming to you to buy a vehicle in the first

Kyle Mountsier: 19:42

place crazy well and not just that, but the but you're undermining the value of your customer too, right. So like if you're placing a higher level of value on a single piece of inventory then you are the value of a customer being sticky to your relationships like

Michael Cirillo: 20:02

connection, all of it. But don't lie to me. It's just because I have a Suzuki on the lot.

Paul Daly: 20:07

Well, yeah, that's the truth. If you think about like, how, what's your six month comment? If you like, kind of use that as the benchmark? And you say, Well, how would you market yourself right now, if you knew you didn't have a product to sell for six months? What would you talk about? What would you say, knowing that you will have the product is six months from now, and it will be ready to sell? And there's somebody? What would you do? What would you say?

Kyle Mountsier: 20:30

So Anthony, are you seeing a shift in the way that that that because you're telling like, Hey, tell a story? Are you seeing a shift in the type of content that the advertiser are placing on on ad platforms? Or is it still so dependent on inventory, that they that advertisers are still only putting one type of content piece out there? Or are you seeing a shift in the type of content,

Unknown: 20:52

it's a little bit of both, I think the dealers that leaned in and get branding and understand that they want to be in front of their customer, because they want to drive a lifetime value of that customer and maybe not just one transaction, they are telling that story, maybe not as deeply as we want, but they're but they've they've shifted, and they've stayed in front of their their customer base, I think the the co op programs drive a lot of a lot of, you know, price, sticker price, and some of those old habits that so the the money that we need this sort of bring in to pay for the advertising is driven by rules that require that. So it makes it a little harder to do that. So it'd be interesting to see if OEM OEMs begin to evolve some of that on behalf of their dealers. But I think there is and I think it's a good sign because I think dealers have an opportunity right now. Because the consumer is understood what what happens at a dealership for the most part, I get my car serviced, and I buy a car, the dealers haven't had to educate a lot on how that works, where we're moving, they're going to need to educate consumers. Again, consumers are going to want to feel comfortable around EVs, they want to understand the dynamics of the logistics of it, digital retailing is a new way of buying a car, they're going to need to learn and understand it, I think, putting having trust out there. And you know, a lot of times your commercial, your advertising is the first impression you make on any consumer. So if they feel trust in that, and they know that, hey, I'm gonna lean into an EV, and this dealer has taught me about it. So I'm gonna go learn some more from them, that creates this dynamic that they haven't had for a long time. And I think that they can go and tell some new stories that they haven't had the opportunity to tell for a few years now.

Kyle Mountsier: 22:31

I love that, I love that I want to I want to just key in on one thing that that we haven't talked about, because I think it's important, you know, early, you said like, as you were moving into, as you were moving into cable, you know, it was the ability to go from, you know, a linear, like very, very broad, broad reach, like targeting, you're only talking the city to you went down to zones. And I love to hear a little bit about because a lot of I think still a lot of people when they think about a TV or cable advertiser, they just still think in this, they think kind of legacy now, which is zone buys and zone bids. But from what I understand you guys at Effectv are, are actually going even deeper with the type of data and audience structures that you have that you've actually innovated at that level as well, allowing dealers to maybe put these stories in front of even a better audience. Can you talk a little bit about the evolution of those audiences?

Anthony Jingoli: 23:35

Yeah, I think he set it up perfectly, and that we were able to kind of shrink the geographies even more, so we can go down to a zip code level, especially with digital. So we can hone in on that. But then we really started to get more precise with the audiences because of our set top box data. So we can aggregate the viewership data to be to be able to say, Okay, people that buy Honda's have these viewing habits, so let's go match commercials to those viewing habits. So now not only are you in the geography that's in your backyard, that's going to drive the most value into your dealership where you're talking to the people that are more likely to buy your car. And you're doing that not just at the bottom of the funnel, but you're teeing up this whole we've talked about the flywheel in the past, you're bringing in the bringing in these customers no matter what their need is, based on that time. So if you need to drive a service message, when you don't have inventory, you can go out and do that in the geography that matters. And then tee up and bring those customers into your dealership nurture them. And then when they're ready to buy new cars, when they're ready to do trade ins. They're there for you. So we've gotten a lot better at bringing that those insights in that first party data that Comcast has, it's so rich, and using it to help dealers inform their campaigns and be much more targeted than they've ever been for a mass medium.

Paul Daly: 24:54

Anthony, we're going to be at ASOTU CON on the ground not too long from now. It's really cool. then it's your hometown. What is the Effectv team? Looking to get out of ASOTU CON and just involvement in events like this?

Anthony Jingoli: 25:07

Yeah, I think it's education. We talked about that evolution, like I'm coming, ready to listen and learn and to end to talk to people about partnerships, like we we're in a space, right, we're not a pure automotive company, right? We have, we live we live automotive, because it's such a big part of our business. But I'm coming to learn and hear who we can talk to about partnering and, and finding other ways, because we have, we have all this robust data in this robust distribution platform, if we can have that be more influenced and educated by things that are an auto, everybody wins in that space. So I think from that standpoint, I'm really interested to just talk to people that I probably shouldn't even be talking to, I should be talking to dealers, but what kind of partnerships are out there and what opportunity is out there for us to make what we provide better in the hopes that that makes it dealers the experience for a dealer much better?

Paul Daly: 25:56

Well, Anthony, it was so much fun. Oh, he's got he got

Kyle Mountsier: 26:00

horn. We never had the trigger pad on this, but the that just got me fired up. Because I'm like, I'm thinking, you know, every collaborator that ever comes to an event is like, how do I find new contracts with dealer which I know that that's an intentionality and we want to connect dealers and industry partners together. But there's so much that can be gained from other industry partners or OEM representatives, understanding the network and the and the inclusivity, that if we bring everyone together, that everything just goes faster and further from an innovation?

Paul Daly: 26:28

Yeah, I would argue that having Anthony's focus is actually one that will yield better, long lasting results when it comes to connecting with the right customers who get what you do fully right. Not a churning customer, but someone who understands why the value proposition is a good fit. Anthony, thank you so much for sharing some of your stories from disruptor to disrupted. And we're on the way back to disruptor on behalf of Kyle Mountsier, Michael Cirillo, myself, thanks for being on Auto Collabs.

Anthony Jingoli: 26:55

Thanks, guys been a pleasure looking forward to next week.

Michael Cirillo: 27:01

You know, I'm always interested in learning from somebody who's kind of like boots on the ground, has experience in what we've all kind of referred to as the traditional way of doing things. And, and interested in seeing how that bridges the gap. And of course, Anthony joined us and gave us some historical insight, but also how it is incredibly feasible to take a medium that we all know and love and know how to use and turn it into something modern. What was your take on that?

Kyle Mountsier: 27:37

Well, for me, this, like I extrapolate this straight to broader automotive. Right, right, is that is that like, when you think about, you know, your Henry Ford, or even like the 70s and 80s of automotive, like super disruptive, extremely innovative. And then a phase of like, up vehicles just existed getting back and forth to work to say, hey, look, this can be again, a disruptive, innovative, like source of pop culture, and to see a company like Effectv or Comcast who now like, again, it's mind boggling to me that in a 20 year timeframe, we can have a company go from like, Oh, my goodness, look at what they're doing to get off of cable right now only only over here. And so, you know, for a company like that, to kind of give us an insight into what it looks like to move back in the disruptor phase. I mean, at the end, he was talking about how much data they have access to and the way that they're doing audience data. I mean, it's just as dialed in as many social media or Google Ad platform data's, you know, data centers. And so, you know, finding that as inspiration from a broader automotive perspective, to say, hey, look, if if a big company like that publicly traded company like that can do it, then anybody you know, in any retail business can take those bumps and bruises and make shifts to go to innovative disrupter, again,

Paul Daly: 29:10

one of my favorite things about what he said was when he kind of distilled everything down, we were talking about the different delivery methods of the message, whether it what kind of screens it shows up on and he says in the end, it's sight, sound and motion. I really love that because if regardless of the platform, you're on, regardless of the distribution method, the sights, the sounds and the motion has to be compelling. It has to connect or it is equally as effective as any other medium. So I use the word Effectv in that Not intentionally, but all that being said, we had a great time with Anthony. And so behalf on behalf of my Non-Philly, born and bred co host Michael Cirillo and Kyle Mountsier. Thank you so much for joining us on Auto Collabs

Unknown: 29:59

sign up for our free and fun to read daily email for a free shot of relevant news and automotive, retail media and pop culture. You can get it now at asotu.com that's ASOtu.com. If you love this podcast, please leave us a review and share it with a friend. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time

‍