Ryan Copacia, Autos and Travel, TikTok

Kyle Mountsier: 0:00This is in the dirt with ASOTU.Paul Daly: 0:04

All right, I think I think this is the first I think this is the first episode of content. Here with Ryan Copacia with TikTok. Yeah. What's your role with TikTok?

Ryan Copacia: 0:14

I'm the lead of automotive retail at TikTok. Okay, now dining and travel as well. But there's just

Paul Daly: 0:21

massive news on your plate as well. So you're the you're the lead of automotive. There's a lot of conversation in automotive. And it has been I think, for the last 12 to 24 months is TikTok a viable platform for auto dealers. Are we just doing fun dances and wasting our time? What would you say to that?

Ryan Copacia: 0:38

It is absolutely a fundamental tool for dealerships. I've been in marketing and been an automotive for a long time. I think this is the most disruptive shift of democratized creativity that ever exists, and everyone's a creator. And if you create great content, there's a tremendous value for your business. Okay,

Paul Daly: 0:54

so I'm gonna play dealers, devil's advocate, okay, we're gonna play that. Game dealers, devil's advocate. Let's do it. Okay, so how is TikTok going to translate to sales?

Ryan Copacia: 1:04

I think it starts with like, the reality of where Well, we're at right now. I think lower funnel social is the new upper funnel branding. See the playground on it? Yeah, I stole it from somebody didn't coin it from us, okay. But you see, you see, like Airbnb, like they were built their business on performance market. And they made this major shift and found better CPAs off that model. I think this industry overall, like, you think about the reality, we're over invested, where we're under investment, people are spending our time and half the United States on TikTok, they're spending on movies worth of time each day in the app. And you're probably spending no time there. This is a unique opportunity for a dealer to put something on message that is either entertaining, informative, or emotional to get attention, right and change the game, the consideration set. And I think, at the end the day we're buying attention to or not have an audience and TikTok offers that space.

Paul Daly: 1:49

Okay. So when you say lower funnel, social, what do you mean? Well,

Ryan Copacia: 1:53

you look at, I mean, just the business over the past 10-15 years, and all the ecosystems exist to support dealerships. I mean, it is still pretty much heavily search based, heavily Facebook oriented retargeting, and a little bit of OTT, in return innovation in those buckets. I think that we've been really investing too much dollars at the last click and trying to convert that customer and compete. The real game. I think it's going to be how do you broaden the scope of, you know, potential customers, and it's just an undeveloped and medium right now. No one's building brand no one's really the short form videos that OEMs produce right now. Dealers are the product experts. There's a major opportunity for innovation there. I think that's the dealers that one would be in that that space.

Paul Daly: 2:33

Okay, another dealer devil epic in question. So is it TikTok? Aren't the users too young to buy a car?

Ryan Copacia: 2:41

Absolutely not. It's a it's no longer kids dancing. It's not just Gen Z, it's mainstream. Over half the United States is on it. We have a massive audience that spends all this time. It's not just for kids. And even if it is just for kids and rich kid, I'm a dad of three, my wife and my kids influence my car purchases and and our data supports that. So absolutely. It does have an impact to dealers, regardless of your kids. You

Paul Daly: 3:01

okay, let me think of one more dealer devil's advocate question, because these are all the good ones. Well, how do I know like, say I make a great video and it gets a million views? How many of those people are actually in my PMA? How many of those can actually sell a car to or become a service customer?

Ryan Copacia: 3:17

Yeah, I mean, if you kind of take a step back, like the automotive business in the US is less than two years old and small team. For the past few years, all we've been talking about is creative. And the why tick, tick, how it's different, and how you won't have offers and sales. And inventory is not the only place. I think the main thing is like you go viral, good, great content, it definitely goes into advertising. Naturally. Every dealer if you have a great content that resonates on Tik Tok in the community, you should be paying to make sure that you are reaching the audience in your market. So until we've also paid we haven't told people to do that yet.

Paul Daly: 3:49

So right and that I mean, that's obviously a strategy that some of the savvy marketers do on Facebook and Instagram, right? You make organic content, if something hits you realize people resonate with it. Now you put dollars behind it, and you run it to a very specified area demographic, how close can you target within the Tiktok? platform?

Ryan Copacia: 4:07

We are Metro DMA. And now zip is an alpha and coming this summer, I think the GI so

Paul Daly: 4:13

well, great. I you know, one of the reasons that I wanted to ask these questions is because we're always trying to figure out what the next thing to do or how we can get a little advantage. And TikTok, I think is an enigma to a lot of dealers, and there are a lot of misconceptions of it out there. And so thanks for you know, talking about a few of those things. I know you've been at our events in the past, and I know you're kind of in the ecosystem, and you just have a real servant mentality and you have an uphill battle.

Unknown: 4:37

Yeah, you know, I think it's, it's a paradigm shift, right short form. Video is a big shift for the whole industry. And I think we're just a big catalyst for that change culture starts on TikTok, but I'm really excited about the innovation is gonna take place over the next couple years and deals that adopted are gonna see tremendous value, and I think the rest of the industry in the OEMs are gonna really support moving forward. So thank you for the time. That's great.

Paul Daly: 4:56

Ryan, thanks for giving us a few minutes. Thanks.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:59

Thank you for listening to in the dirt with ASOTU. We love the automotive industry and the people who make it run day in and day out. We would love to connect with you more through our daily dose of fun, a free email that you can sign up for at ASOTU.com. That's a s o t u.com. We put our heart and soul into it every day. Thanks again for listening. Join us next time for more Conversations in the dirt with ASOTU

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