Inflation = Repos, Ford Picks Trucks Over EVs, Green Bubble Goodbye

Unknown: 0:00

Huh

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:07

Oh good morning. Paul's back in Syracuse thanks is to see his family are all about family here at a soda we're talking to Federation is up. Fords again trucks in green bubbles or patios.

Paul J Daly: 0:21

Oh man,

Kyle Mountsier: 0:23

not really.

Paul J Daly: 0:24

When they see me. Don't show me watch for So wait, we got in super late last night yesterday I was in four states, Idaho, Washington State, Texas and New York.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:37

We did a for me.

Paul J Daly: 0:38

We did a Flying V across the mall we had we were at the brand building summit just down in Moscow, by the way, it's Moscow, Idaho, not Moscow, Moscow. There's no cat so no cow. Okay, so we drove from there to Spokane, Washington, the only way to get back to Syracuse relatively efficiently was the fly direct to Dallas. And then Dallas direct to Syracuse got in late last night. And my wife came down for coffee and like, just like we always do in the morning. I was like, I haven't actually seen you since Sunday afternoon, because we were at Beaver Toyota and all the things. So I was like I'm doing the show from home this morning. I'm

Kyle Mountsier: 1:13

like, talk to us a little bit about recap, this brand build event that Darren put on because he pulled together some people that are thinking extremely critically about what it takes to brand and build employee retention through that. Like what was the thesis? What were the themes? So

Paul J Daly: 1:34

typical Darren format, right? It was like a Cowboys conference, not like you know what I mean? There's just people who are making so we had like the the lead singer, the frontman for the punk band MX px. So I mean, we're going way back in the day, but there's still crushing they're still building brand is pleased singers on LinkedIn. Now. Mike Herrera, his name is so I got to spend a little time with him. John Sacco with recycling. We met people that were in data. I met a guy named Stefan I can't remember his last name. But he basically built the all the third party web page systems for Amazon. So if you're a third party seller on Amazon, he's like, oh, yeah, there he goes. He worked with Bezos directly like him and for the people with Bezos in a room. And he was telling stories about what it was like to work. And, and basically, he was like, yeah, he's like, there was a there was a season he goes where I was in charge of the internet's magic money button. I'm like, What are you talking about? He's like the Buy Now button. A Buy Now button? Yeah. Oh, my internet's so I mean, these are people that understand what it takes to be flexible and nimble. And what we were talking about brand, actually, Gary Vaynerchuk, book, day trading attention came up a lot. The bottom line is this. You can't be romantic about what you think you want to do. You have to pay attention to what other people want, and deliver that to them. And the more romantic you are about what you think, the less likely you are to connect with people. And that's why I'm there. His approach to brand is very is very broad, right? saying like, Hey, you have to have to try things you have to be willing to do you lean into what is uniquely you, and keep going until it hits and we're seeing that right now, actually, with Mohawk Chevrolet, well, there are years

Kyle Mountsier: 3:08

and years of consistent work to like, all of a sudden, the payoff is they just kept doing it. And something hit right. Yeah.

Paul J Daly: 3:18

Because people they were like, have you seen this? I'm like, oh, yeah, they're great friends. And I got two emails

Kyle Mountsier: 3:23

this week from people that don't know that I know them like Oh, have you seen what these people are doing? Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 3:29

they were they're saying they're James Orsini from VaynerMedia sent me a link yesterday, like, oh, we see this. It's like, oh, yeah, they've been on. But it's no surprise, right? The people that all of a sudden, right, have this thing. It's usually like, where they come from. And a lot of the truth is, like, most of them have been doing it for a long time. And it just having worked with bands works with all kinds of stuff. So yeah, it was great to just get outside the industry. And realize like, it's the same game. In my session, we did a lot of q&a, and kind of went back through my history and my journey, talked about the book that I wrote, and just how like back then it was like the the auto industry retail dealers needing a translator to say, Hey, this is how you approach the market with brands and some were doing it it wasn't like no one was doing it. But now here we are, like several years later, and you know, you and I have been talking about this a lot like the tide seems to be turning and and people are waking up to the fact that building brand actually has a very actionable and tangible ROI. Yep.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:29

You're spot on. And more and more people in auto are figuring it out. So yep. Especially healing to it

Paul J Daly: 4:35

recruiting. Yeah, let's do it. We got some news to talk about today. Oh, do we have any what are we releasing anything today? We've released a bunch of stuff this week.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:41

I think crazy. We got a webinar coming up. We you if you haven't checked out Auto Collabs recently, the last four episodes are amazing. So go find Auto Collabs on a podcast platform, check them out. Auto

Paul J Daly: 4:54

Collabs Yeah, we got a variety webinar August 7 2pm. What's up with the cars rule remain? number that we were talking about the cars real quick, quite a bit back in the day with our friends at Mosaic compliance service. James Gunther like Jim Ganter has got the best voice ever. So if you just want to hear an amazing radio voice, very smart this is just for compliance built by lawyers. So they're the kind of the people like you want telling you about compliance. So, August 7, go to a soda.com sign up for that the webinars these quick shots have been an absolute blast. So we hope you'll join us there to talk about some news, shall we do it? Okay, this this was coming. Automotive repossessions are up 23% 23% in just the first half of 2024. Surpassing now pre pandemic levels, indicating some financial stress and consumers as interest rates are up inflation is hitting everybody. And now that all like kind of like the stimulus money has dried up, people are starting to fall behind again, vehicle seizures decreased during the pandemic during to do to like this stimulus. And also there's a lot of bank leniency, right, there's a lot going on. But now surge back repos, up 14% over 29 over last year 14% up over pre pan, pandemics subprime borrowers are struggling with 5.62% of them at least 60 days late now on their payments, average interest rates are up obviously new cars 7.3 for new cars 11.5 for used cars, monthly payments, averaging $739 for new, and now five, almost $550 for a used cars. Goodness, we'll see the Fed might lower interest rates later this year bringing some relief. Jeremy Rob, our new friend, Senior Director of Economic and Industry Insights at Cox automotive summed it up and saying, quote, I think a lot of consumers are really waiting to see if interest rates come down a little that's kept a lot of people on the sidelines. That is something Kyle that you've been saying for for the last month or two been talking? Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:54

what's exactly right. Yeah, I think, you know, we went through this wave where people had disposable income, and were willing to purchase at the high interest rates, high payments, the bifurcated market didn't come into play as much. But now that you see, you know, we're talking about high auto insurance rates, you see high interest rates, people are very aware of that less disposable income now than there was two years ago, or even disposable bank account holdings. And so you get into this position where people are sidelined, again, due to affordability for different reasons, right. And so I think, as used car prices start to renormalize. And hopefully we don't get too much reinstallation and used car prices due to the least turnings coming in not coming back. But if they continue to normalize and see a downward trend, and we get a reduction in the interest rates, we may see another influx of buying behavior in q4, early q1 of next year. So you know, it just means that the auto industry gets to, you know, flex and move again. Absolutely.

Paul J Daly: 8:04

And there'll be ready for it because they're paying attention to what the market wants. Speaking of what the market wants, hit the button somebody hit there. Yeah. So Ford has again slowed down its Evie plans now repurposing its Canadian Oakville assembly plant to build the opposite of EVs, large gasoline powered F series Super Duty trucks all the way back. Delaying even further the launch of the much anticipated three row SUV, the Oakville facility facility will now add capacity for 100,000 100,000 F series Super Duty trucks. The Kentucky plant and the Ohio plant are running flat out they said we can't miss the demand right highly profitable VA. They're saying we're not playing the game. We're we're making what we want the consumer to buy. We're playing the game, we're we're making what they're telling us they want to buy. They lost nearly $4.7 billion last year on their EV business. With projected losses of up to 5.5 billion this year, they plan to invest an additional $3 billion to accomplish this Super Duty expansion. The production expansion securing the 1800 jobs that are currently at Oakville and adding about 220 More jobs at the engine and component plants.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:31

I I'm going to venture a guess that $3 billion investment is going to have a mask on it. The ROI is coming back. Yeah, the I'll tell you what this is we could call this from a mile away a year ago, right. People want trucks in the US and they gotta make them and so here they come down the pike gonna get some gas up in them engines.

Paul J Daly: 9:59

I I'm pretty sure like, I'm pretty sure like these are the most profitable vehicles in lineup, I think right? Duty trucks, right? Yeah. So I mean, last year, right, we saw a big pinch on these. And we were talking about Super Duty trucks when they were in the middle of this Evie thing because they couldn't get enough of them, right? There's a backlog people wouldn't remember

Kyle Mountsier: 10:17

when 20 days, all those F 150s were sitting on massive parking lots without shoes. And people had demand then and they still have demand now because the backlog of production. Yeah.

Paul J Daly: 10:28

And I think this is this is one of the great things that has come from all of the all the back and forth, is the fact that I'm kind of sensing this across the board, not just in the auto industry, but just in culture in general, that when you go through such like, like a call it polarizing, but what I mean is like you're in such one extreme of something. And rational thinking starts to come back to the market and like consumer demand, actually driving business decisions, I think we're so far less likely to ever go back there again. Because now it's obvious and clear that the especially like the OEMs, they're being held accountable to like the results like they always are. But like the cultural swing around, EVS gave him a little bit of a pass, held accountable to generating profit, making the things that people want to buy. And I think we're not going back, we're not going to go back to that irrational thinking.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:23

Now, speaking of irrational thinking, Oh, it's about time. The irrational thinking is really about buying an Android that we won't say we're biased, but Apple's iOS 18 is finally bringing RCS support to iPhones. We knew about this a little bit ago, but people are starting to get their hands and more scale on the beta. This is going to significantly improve messaging between iPhone and Android users. The biggest thing, photos are now high res ending the area of that tiny little blurry image that came across. If you want to check this out, you can get the iPhone, the iOS 18 in beta on iPhones, by going to your settings right now. There are some home homescreen customization options, Siri improvements revamped Photos app. They added they added the RCS communication feature. And then just so you know, you're still gonna get the green bubble. Yeah, and the apple RCS implementation is still not encrypted. So you may still want to WhatsApp your Android friends for encrypted messaging. But, you know, it's a step in the right direction. And I think, you know, obviously, Apple has has dealt with pressure from all sides at this point on messaging and even just like flexibility of the platform, and you see that with iOS 18. Just kind of a little interesting one for for the end of your Friday. Well, I

Paul J Daly: 12:59

think I think it's, it's relatable, because there's a lot of like, everyone has the friends that have the Android phones, right. And it's like a pop culture thing where like the blue bubble has been like, I don't know, it's been a little bit of a sign of like, contention for Apple users via Android use. And like, you know, and you start to take us the group and like, alright, we're blue, and then you put the one and then you hit, like, start to type a message in a group text screen, and you're like, ah, who do I have to remove from this group text? Who doesn't get this day? I wonder if this? Well, I wonder if it'll still show up? In iMessage across the Mac platform, like when you're on a Mac? Like is that going to show up now? Like, that's one of the most annoying things for me.

Kyle Mountsier: 13:46

Oh, you don't get I don't Yeah, you can take care of that.

Paul J Daly: 13:50

See? That's why we do this show.

Kyle Mountsier: 13:52

That's why we do this show. Hey, if you use a Mac, and you don't get your Android friends messages in your iMessage you can do it. It's fine. There's just a couple settings that you got it Oh, right. Hey,

Paul J Daly: 14:02

are you on the beta right now?

Kyle Mountsier: 14:04

No, I'm not I thought about it. But this beta introduces a ton of new features

Paul J Daly: 14:10

so you don't want to get stuck in something that's gonna

Kyle Mountsier: 14:13

break regular basis. I've heard the horror stories. Yeah, I've heard the horror

Paul J Daly: 14:17

stories. Well, there you go. If you have a friend that has the Android now is a great time to just text them a high resolution phone and be like, we were at this level of relationship. We're at this level of rant, let me just have a brand cycle though. Apple's done. I think a really clever job with making everybody happy, supporting the RCS making the EU happy, having it as a convenience for its users while still maintaining the brand exclusivity that they're so good at building. They're so good at building I actually saw when I was in Moscow, Idaho, there was a computer shop and I was like a computer shop. storefront I was like miles we have to go in this place and it kind of reminded me of like a RadioShack. First of all, I have no idea how they make any money. Um, you know selling like, network jack ends and but they had an original Macintosh Lisa computer. Oh, that's so cool. And at the time at the time it costs like, I don't know $3,000.84 Which today$31,000 Today, today's dollars, who knows how much it's worth now that's the power of reason

Kyle Mountsier: 15:22

that wild. That's the power of brand. All right, let's roll it. Well, hey look, we know the power of brand stretches much past your store and all the way to the auto industry, but you're a unique part of that. So go serve someone today care locally, because globally, we're counting on you

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