This transcript was generated with the help of AI and may contain some errors.

Nate Buelow [00:00:00]:

For us, it’s a cautious but strategic approach in knowing that you can’t just keep doing what you did yesterday, because at the end of the day, if you do that, you’re never going to get anywhere. Things are changing too fast, too quickly. AI is going to be in there trying to evolve around us. So we have to be nimble enough to be able to make those, I guess, strategic chances in some cases and dive in.

 

Kyler Mason [00:00:24]:

Whether you’re going to market through dealers, distributors, or some other partner channel. The mediated sale is complex. We call it B2B2X

 

John Gough [00:00:32]:

But the leaders in the industry are the ones who are making it look simple. I’m John Gough.

 

Kyler Mason [00:00:37]:

And I’m Kyler Mason. And this is why you win, presented by Element Three.

 

John Gough [00:00:42]:

Our guest today is Buelow, the Director of Marketing at Ram Trucks. Nate is a truck guy, and so his perspective on how to build a team and what it takes to win in this marketplace is really specific and really interesting. He’s got some background in other retail brands and consumer facing brands that has given him a perspective on what kind of people you need and how you leverage the backstop that he has at Stellantis and that sort of large marketing capability and also what kind of boots he needs on the ground. On a day to day basis, he’s watching the gauges of the market, and he’s taking chances and making changes on a regular enough basis that Ram is getting really well positioned to win. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Nate, thanks for coming on the show today. We’re really glad to have you.

 

Nate Buelow [00:01:28]:

No, thanks for having me on, and thanks for letting me be here.

 

John Gough [00:01:31]:

You are a. You’re a pickup enthusiast is one of the things that we learned before we got on the call together. And so I wanted to just give you a second to talk about your background and why this is such a perfect fit for you.

 

Nate Buelow [00:01:46]:

Absolutely. Yeah. And pickup enthusiasts is probably a good way to frame it. I would say this. I’ve got thousands of tools in my garage, right? Wrenches and tape measures and all that stuff. The tool that I use the most day in, day out is my truck. And that’s because a truck is, to me, the most versatile tool that I have. I can tow with it, I can haul with it, I can go out to dinner, I can drop people off.

 

Nate Buelow [00:02:14]:

It’s unlimited in the resources for it. And the reason why I’m so much of a fan of. God bless. I wish I would have had a truck as my first vehicle because all the friends moving back and forth in high school, in college and going and doing stuff. It’s just the most versatile vehicle that you can buy. And we’ve seen that. Right. You know, one out of every ten new vehicles sold, give or take, is a pickup truck in the US.

 

Nate Buelow [00:02:39]:

And there’s a reason for that. It’s because it is one of the most versatile things you can have. And for me personally, like, I have a, a small toy problem. So, you know, motorcycles, side by sides, quads, all that stuff. And you can’t get those things, at least where I lived, right to the trailhead from home. So they’ve got to go on a trailer in the bed of my truck and, and get there. So it truly is to me a content enabler because that’s what I like to do when I’m going out and having fun. And God bless my heavy duty ram truck and the Cummins engine that powers it because it’s, it’s an absolute enabler of everything I love.

 

Kyler Mason [00:03:15]:

So you like to be the guy that gets called to help move every now and again.

 

Nate Buelow [00:03:18]:

I’m getting a little bit older now, so, you know, pizza and beer aren’t as attractive to me as they used to be, but still, helping friends do stuff and move stuff is. It’s just part of it.

 

John Gough [00:03:28]:

Yeah, I’ll tell your side by side to the trailhead for you. That’s the.

 

Nate Buelow [00:03:33]:

Absolutely.

 

John Gough [00:03:34]:

That’s the new favor that you want.

 

Nate Buelow [00:03:36]:

I’ll take those phone calls over. Hey, I’ve got these heavy dressers. Can we get them into the bed of your truck any day of the week? That’s for sure.

 

John Gough [00:03:42]:

So just to get us started, can you tell us about your role at ram trucks? How do you fit in the business? What are you responsible for?

 

Nate Buelow [00:03:49]:

Yeah. So I fit in for all of our marketing communications that go out there to the globe. So everything from both here in the US, which is our largest market, but also in all the expanding markets that we are growing like crazy in, whether that be Europe, the Middle East, South America, and working with all the respective teams both there and domestically here in the US to drive the business. Ultimately, marketing is very much a service organization to drive sales. And that’s what I’m there to do is how do we help drive enough demand to be able to sell the number of trucks that we need to sell and get more and more customers into ram trucks and behind the wheel.

 

Kyler Mason [00:04:25]:

What does that look like in the scope of the entire marketing? Can you verbally paint a chart for us?

 

Nate Buelow [00:04:34]:

Absolutely. Yeah. I think the, the interesting thing about the way Stellantis has its setup is you have a brand team. So each one of our north american brands and our global brands all live independently of one another. So under the Stellantis umbrella, of course, but you’ve got a Ram truck team, you’ve got a jeep team, you’ve got a dodge team. And the way that the brand marketing teams Interact is you’ve got all sorts of great, talented people across support organizations for everything from your websites to your content creation to your social media, and of course, all of our wonderful agency partners as well, that letter into that. But my main role is to architect all of those things, working together and working in harmony to be able to drive the business. And that’s, I think, the most exciting and the most challenging part of it is because you’ve got a lot of different folks out there all trying to accomplish all the right things to drive the brand, but making sure that all those messages are aligned, tell the same story, all fit within each other.

 

Nate Buelow [00:05:31]:

It’s definitely a lot, and it’s a great challenge to have. It doesn’t always go perfectly. I wish it always did. But the good news is that we just were in the weeds of that business every single day to try and drive it. And that’s, I guess, the fun part of how we react and how we try to message and manage through it.

 

Kyler Mason [00:05:48]:

Does Stellantis have a center of excellence for web teams or other different functions that then the brand teams leverage? Is that how it works?

 

Nate Buelow [00:05:56]:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great, great clarifier. The way it’s set up is. So for all the. I’ll say, specialties, right? Like. Cause our website team is truly a group of specialists. Our media buying teams, or CRM teams, they are centralists, and I would say the best in their business at what they do.

 

Nate Buelow [00:06:13]:

And the brand teams then work with them to leverage that. Now, for some of the brands, those are shared resources, right? Cause they might not warrant a full head or a full dedicated body to that business 100% of the time, but for others, they very much are. There’s a person like Courtney, I’ll give her a shout out. She is my media person. We rely on her heavily to make sure that all our media buying and planning goes smoothly and works flawlessly.

 

Kyler Mason [00:06:42]:

Being in this world now, I’m curious, you have a main point of contact at Stellantis that you’re going through to drive all of your media strategy and execution, and then there, like, are they handling all of that on behalf of you, or do you interface with a large team on the media side, yeah.

 

Nate Buelow [00:06:59]:

We interface with a larger team, I would say so. Courtney is our one point of contact. She’s phenomenal at it, and just like all the other specialists that are inside of that realm, they’ve all got their agency partners that they then lean on and both the execution and the strategy and building out all of those nuances and all those stories. But it’s kind of an interesting way that Slantus has set it up. I’ve had the privilege to work for a lot of great organizations, and I would say Stellantis has one of the more interesting designs for it and quite frankly, the most effective designs for it, because it allows us to be both nimble when there’s an opportunity or an issue, but it also allows the level of speciality that allows that person to be focused in on it. So that way we’re getting the best performance all the time, and it’s really just a dialed in product at the end of the day.

 

John Gough [00:07:49]:

So I imagine then that you’ve got a few key team members that are specifically for Ram truck, and they have a specialty of their own, and then they also interact with the group service. Tell us about your team.

 

Nate Buelow [00:08:03]:

Yes, so my team is, again, an interesting dynamic. We’ve got our communication specialist, Nick. All he does is PR. He’s one of the best I’ve ever worked with in it, and he is our PR specialist. And you guys, I think, had the pleasure of meeting him on one of our pre calls. Then we’ve got Renee, who dials in all of our website, our CRM, and a lot of our customer facing messaging. Erin is my social media lead, so she does all the social stuff and works very closely with Nick on PR because those two worlds, as I’m sure you guys have seen, are just intersecting like crazy at this point. Right.

 

Nate Buelow [00:08:37]:

I would say the gray line that used to be there is now just completely blurred and out of the way, and those two worlds have completely intersected with one another. And then the other big piece of our business that we’re working on growing like crazy is our Ram professional business. So there we’ve got a dedicated head just for Ram professional and being able to drive that business because that customer is so much different than, I would say, a retail customer today, that you guys might have a truck in your driveway, but that Ram professional customer uses that vehicle for both work and play, and it’s got to be there and something they can rely on to be able to deliver their income. So that takes a whole other customer I don’t know, a customer level of knowledge and specialization that we’re really focused in on making sure we deliver. Then on top of that, I’ve got a sales team. So we’ve got regional folks that are all across the country to be able to drive that business home with our dealers and be able to essentially communicate all this stuff out because Ram’s got a ton of stuff happening. We just did. Our integration with twisters is a really good example right now.

 

Nate Buelow [00:09:40]:

If you guys, I’m going to guess you were around for the first movie and getting that all out there. And the Ram truck was basically the third main character of that film. If you haven’t seen the new one yet, it very much is that same flavor. And we did a lot of work to be able to make that happen with Universal and the studio and Glenn ultimately. But our team had to get that message out there and how we could leverage it and dealers doing viewing parties and all that stuff. So the regional team, I want to short sell them. They do phenomenal job. And we’ve got 2400 stores all across the country that need to have that message and be able to drive that home too.

 

Nate Buelow [00:10:14]:

So that’s a whole other, I guess, dichotomy that we have to play with.

 

John Gough [00:10:18]:

Yeah. I think you’re the first person on the show who has been part of a major motion picture launch. So what was. What was the biggest surprise for you out of that experience? Or was this. Is this just old hat? You’re just like, this is part of the game.

 

Nate Buelow [00:10:34]:

No, I wish. Yeah, it would be great if it was that smooth. I think with anything else, the more partners that you bring into something, the more complex it gets.

 

Kyler Mason [00:10:42]:

Right.

 

Nate Buelow [00:10:42]:

Because everybody has their own. Whether it’s a production schedule that they’re trying to deliver against, a promotional calendar that they’re delivering against. And we took an interesting, I guess, viewpoint on it where we actually pulled Glenn into one of our vehicle reveals. So we just revealed our sport truck lineup, which is now going to be flagship by the RHO, which is an all new nameplate for us. It’s got the twin turbo hurricane motor in it, instead of the hellcat motor that was there before, but also now at an all new, lower than ever price point. And we pulled Glenn into that. So Glenn was part of our whole marketing campaign launch for it. Then we layered in all the promotion around universal and what they were doing on the red carpet and some of their social teasers and all that.

 

Nate Buelow [00:11:25]:

So I think to me, the surprising part of it is that one, it all came together as smoothly as it did, but two, just how complex and how many intricacies that we had to manage through to be able to make that happen in a way that was, I guess, most impactful for the brand, which is all we were trying to chase.

 

Kyler Mason [00:11:41]:

Question for you on the bigger picture for the marketing, what are the things that you’re driving toward right now, your biggest priorities as a team?

 

Nate Buelow [00:11:51]:

Yeah, I think for us the top priority is driving enough demand to continue to move through all the trucks that we’ve got out there and that are on the ground. The good news is, is that we’ve got some great strategies in place to do that, whether that be lead generation or some of our upcoming partnerships with the College Football Playoff and some of the other bigger, I would say, I don’t want to say it, more viewable. Things like we’re doing a marketing launch with the Pat McAfee show should be an awesome integration, will be the first time he’s worked with an auto brand. But I guess for us it’s really about trying to drive that message home and being able to drive through the vehicles that we’ve got as well as create demand for some of the new vehicles that we’ve got coming up. The fun part about I would say the auto industry right now is we’re going through this massive transformation and whether that be powertrain transformation and moving through EV’s as well as just the technological evolution and things like adding smartphone is a key. I mean, I was at a Marriott when I was on vacation, use my smartphone to open up my hotel room. I never even need to check in at a desk. And now you’re going to have that with your new trucks that are coming out.

 

Nate Buelow [00:12:57]:

So for us it’s, I guess, evolving to be able to deliver what that customer is going to expect and how we can message it out there to make it as impactful as we can to drive that business.

 

Kyler Mason [00:13:09]:

Are there key metrics that you guys are as a marketing accountable for, ask to report on regularly or what does that look like?

 

Nate Buelow [00:13:18]:

Yeah, we go through a plethora of demand generation metrics that we monitor on a daily basis and I dont say that lightly because thats the first thing myself and my team do in the morning, is we pour through the metrics and making sure whether thats the regionalization of it and making sure that demand is coming in where we need it to and every step of the funnel, whether thats our top of the line website visits all the way down to the foot traffic that we’re getting into the dealerships, those demand levers are all things that we can pull and change and fix. And like I said before, marketing is a service organization to the business. So you’ve got to know what’s going on with it to be able to course correct or adapt or change when maybe things aren’t working the way that you wanted to or had planned. And as you guys know, that’s marketing. Right? You have to be a nimble and on the fly and be able to shift is needed.

 

John Gough [00:14:10]:

Yeah. So, Nate, I’m interested in that because you guys are obviously seasoned pros. You’ve got a bunch of season pros as a backstop at Stellantis. And so the way you describe that process feels like it has levers and a playbook. Like, you know, you’re reading the scorecard every morning, you know what to do, and the lights are green and red. Have you been in other situations in your career where that playbook and the infrastructure hasn’t been built?

 

Nate Buelow [00:14:35]:

Absolutely. And I would even say, like, agency side, too. So I started out agency world, kind of working my way through there. And the flurry of clients that we would work with that maybe especially at the beginning of my career when the digital side of things and the metrics that we would look at were still in their infancy. Right. It was just not as developed as what it is today. That’s the toughest thing. Right.

 

Nate Buelow [00:14:58]:

Because then it’s whether it’s looking at Norema model as an example, to say, okay, historically, how have those metrics performed and what have they done for our business? Because we can all measure a ton of things as marketers, but what’s actually doing to help the business and drive, that is a whole different conversation. So I guess back to your original question. Yeah, definitely been in those situations. And I think those are both some of the most challenging, but also the most fun because it’s creationism time. And the hardest thing, I think, in marketing, whether you’re creative and you have to get a new ad out there, new video or whatever the case may be, or you’re looking at it from a data side and what you’re going to do to change things, it’s all creationism at that point. So it’s a fun challenge, but like I said, it’s a super difficult one, too, because then you got to, there’s a lot of emotions tied to it as well. Right. And a lot of stakeholders and all sorts of fun stuff.

 

John Gough [00:15:53]:

Yeah, yeah, totally. And you’ve been on both sides of that, having seen, maybe the metaphor is like, you’re currently flying the space shuttle. It’s not easy to fly the space shuttle. You got to know what the lights mean on the dashboard. When you have the dashboard. When they don’t have the dashboard, you have to build the dashboard. Talk to. Talk to me about the transition.

 

John Gough [00:16:13]:

If you’re entering a new organization right now, having seen a and from scratch, what are the ones that you’re looking for first? What do you need to know when you’re getting it off the ground?

 

Nate Buelow [00:16:27]:

Yeah, I think one of the more important things is understanding the website side of it. Or conversely, if it’s like a mobile app, as an example, what are our user behaviors inside of those two experiences? Because at the end of the day, the nice thing is, is everything is measurable there in a digital storefront, no matter where it is or how it’s accessed, is one of the most important things that you can get a better understanding of, because what’s the first thing that you do when you see tv commercial in the Olympics, or if you’re playing a game on your phone and you saw an ad for something that was compelling, you click in and you go to their website. So to me, as a diagnostic, that’s one of the first things that I do entering a new situation, is what is going on there? How do things work? How’s the lead flow? How’s the customer experience? All of that stuff is super critical. But then the next step for me is always meeting with our sales teams and whether that’s a d, two c product, a b, two b product, or something in between, understanding what those main customers needs are, whether that be the end user customer, could be a dealer, could be a wholesaler, all those things are super important to know, because that’s what’s going to, I guess, shift the business. And again, some of that is anecdotal and not necessarily as measurable as we’d all like, but it’s all important to take into the blend. To your point, on the space shuttle dashboard, those are some of the key lights that trigger. And when one of those lights goes red, everybody’s world changes. So it’s important to understand what they are.

 

Nate Buelow [00:17:56]:

And again, being able to impact that is critical.

 

Kyler Mason [00:17:59]:

What’s the culture in ram trucks when a critical light goes red, what happens?

 

Nate Buelow [00:18:06]:

It’s all out. Everybody joins in as a team, and we have to focus in and try and impact that decision. That’s one thing I would credit our leadership team on quite a bit, is they understand the need to be nimble and the need to react to all of this. And it’s a different world right now than it was even three years ago in Covid. And being here when that first hit, I mean, that was a whole other red light world where we didn’t know what was going to happen. So I think being smart and nimble and willing to react is one of the strengths of this company as a whole. But it’s really important for us to get a quick understanding of the business we’ve got. I would say, from understanding the business, the sales standpoint, our leader, Bob Roederdorf, has done a great job of creating this dashboard.

 

Nate Buelow [00:18:51]:

So we’ve got this 300 page stack that gets updated every day. Not every slide, but a lot of it’s updated automatically, that is. So it’s just a feed in from an API, but you can quickly diagnose exactly what’s going on with the business. When one of those red light pops, you know whether it’s a competitive move, you know whether it’s a regional move, an inventory move, and you’re able to react to that and make adjustments. And I think that’s the key to any business I’ve ever worked on, is just being smart, being aware, making adjustments when you need to. It’s the best thing you can do.

 

Kyler Mason [00:19:23]:

Are there any, uh, like, situations from your recent past, let’s say, aside from COVID where you have a story that comes to mind when a light went red? To continue on with this thread? And can you tell us, like, what that was, how you guys reacted, what you did about it?

 

Nate Buelow [00:19:40]:

Yeah, I would say I touched in from a side that was non automotive at Merrell. So Merrell’s the number one hiking boot in the world. If you guys don’t know it. It’s the silhouette that you think of when you think of a hiking boot. It’s a Merrell moab, and over 5 million pairs sold. But over time, the moab was starting to lose a lot of market share. So I came on to Merrell. Gosh, three, four years ago now.

 

Nate Buelow [00:20:05]:

And when you looked at the market share charts, we were losing, like, we were still number one. But all these other new entrants that were coming in the market, Hoka and on, were just cannibalizing that, especially that retail market share within sport and goods stores or REI or any of those types of big clients. So red light was flashing because we look at this monthly share report and we’re like, man, we’re starting to get eaten alive by some of these more athletic brands. For us, it was really a multi prong approach where one, we attacked it from a wholesale channel. How do we get those retailers more of the shoes that were trapped in ports overseas from the manufacturing? And this was still during, it was after Covid, but it was still dealing with ramifications of that. So we started air freighting in a bunch of those shoes because at the end of the day, that market share was important to us and keeping those wholesalers in a good spot was really important to us. So we did that. We, from a product side, started to develop these more athletic hiking sneakers.

 

Nate Buelow [00:21:05]:

Because hey, at the end of the day, if everybody wants a brown leather hiking boot, how do we bring in new colorways? How do we bring in new styles that are lighter, more I guess akin to what the market was asking for. And we brought those in to help bolster our market share there. And then from a, d, two, c side, we started to over communicate some of the benefits of it. Because at the end of the day, a lot of folks are hiking in the like converse all stars is an example. You see them on the trail all the time. And nothing against converse, it’s a great shoe, but it’s not designed for all the things that you go through when you’re hiking on a trail that’s rugged and tough and uneven. So getting that messaging out there. So those are just a few of the actions that we took.

 

Nate Buelow [00:21:48]:

But by and large, it worked. So the good news is Moab started to recover on the upswing. We started to see our retail market share do really well. And that’s at the end of the day, we got more people, the right shoes to go out and do all the adventures that they wanted to do. So it was good.

 

John Gough [00:22:05]:

I was on a canoeing trip this summer and we were portaging, carrying the canoe from one lake to the other. I took one trip in my crocs and then I sat down and I put on my merrells and I didn’t take them back off because I was not going to go hiking carrying a canoe in crocs ever again.

 

Kyler Mason [00:22:25]:

Sport mode.

 

John Gough [00:22:25]:

At least they were in sport mode. But it turns out didn’t it didn’t make the difference I needed.

 

Kyler Mason [00:22:30]:

I doubt it did. You’re probably slipping all over the place.

 

John Gough [00:22:33]:

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

Nate Buelow [00:22:36]:

I was telling you guys before I was dressed out in Bozeman, and even though I’m not in that business anymore, I was hiking around Yellowstone and you could just see that, right? The hard thing is, and that’s why education for our customers and their end usage is so important in anything that we do. Because folks are having a bad time. Right. It’s slippery, it’s muddy, it’s uneven. And John, to your point of what you just described on foraging, a canoe like that can make your trip go from the most amazing adventure you’ve ever been on to a really bad time if you slip and fall or twist an ankle or whatever. So it’s not to be doom and gloom, but that’s the reality of what you face out there. And I think no matter the industry, keeping that customer end use in mind and what trying to help them avoid a problem before it even becomes a problem is it’s critically important to anything that we do from a comm side, too.

 

John Gough [00:23:25]:

Yeah. Helping them look around the. Around the corner on that.

 

Kyler Mason [00:23:28]:

So from a brand architecture standpoint, in your current world, does it go Stellantis ram trucks? And then there’s Ram professional and Ram, right?

 

Nate Buelow [00:23:38]:

Kind of, yeah. So Ram overall is the halo Ram professional really is. Just to describe it more accurately, it’s a subset of people within Ram that is very much focused on understanding that professional customer more than anything else. We’ve got contingencies in Europe for some of our european brands. So as a whole, there’s a whole Stellantis pro one organization that lives kind of within all of this, and Rampro sits within that in color. I don’t mean to be overly complex or two in this, but, yeah, I think that’s probably a fair description.

 

Kyler Mason [00:24:16]:

Okay, so do you, in your role in your team’s focus, have a focus on both consumer and the pro side?

 

Nate Buelow [00:24:25]:

Absolutely.

 

Kyler Mason [00:24:26]:

How’s your time split these days?

 

Nate Buelow [00:24:28]:

Right now, I would say it’s probably 60 40 retail versus pro. We’re doing a lot right now to invest in that professional business because we’ve got a lot of foundational things that we need to build out for it. It’s everything from building out our financial products to build up an offering that would be relevant to a professional customer. At the end of the day, if you’re going to buy five vehicles over the next two years, you want to get financed for that. So it’s building that out, building out some of the telematics or digital services that our fleet buyers or professional buyers need. That’s taken up a huge chunk of time, and rightfully so, because those are really important customers. And we, the good news is we’ve built out and allocated a lot of resources to it to be able to drive that piece of the business home. And then on the retail side, at the end of the day, that is our bread and butter.

 

Nate Buelow [00:25:16]:

We sell a lot of trucks to a lot of people all over the globe and we’ve got a lot of ground to continue to build up on. We just launched our new Ram 1500. And for us, one of the biggest consumer challenges is we sunset the hemi. And if you guys are like me, you remember that thing got a hemi commercials as one of my inspirations. Getting advertising back in the day. Well, it doesn’t anymore. But the good news is that as we get more of the hurricane motors out there, the new straight six hurricane, it’s actually more powerful, it’s smoother, it can do all the things that a hemi could do, but better. That’s a big education point for our customers.

 

Nate Buelow [00:25:55]:

At the end of the day, we built a lot of brand equity around being a powerful, strong truck and we haven’t let any of that go. But at the end of the day, it’s new. So getting those trucks on the road, getting them out in front of people, getting that messaging to folks to let them know that is absolutely critical.

 

Kyler Mason [00:26:12]:

What are some of the biggest challenges you’re facing on the pro side in the marketing, messaging and reaching the, the buyer? What are those things looking like for you?

 

Nate Buelow [00:26:22]:

I think for us, it’s very much understanding the account based approach that we need to take. At the end of the day, a government fleet buyer is a lot different than a construction fleet buyer is a lot different than an agricultural buyer. The good news is we’ve got strength across a lot of those segments. However, tailoring the message to continue to grow at the pace that we want to is critically important. Not to mention we’ve got our new EV aspects to our brand that are launching now. We’ve got a new promaster EV that’s out there in the marketplace that we’ve got to grow and find the right customers for to be able to fit their needs. Because at the end of the day, it’s not a one best fit solution. There are a multitude of uses for, whether it be EV or ice or whatever.

 

Nate Buelow [00:27:08]:

We just have to find those right customers. So I think that that’s a big part of what we’re trying to do, right. So that way we don’t let our customers down. At the end of the day, they trust us with their. Basically with their form of income. So without us, if they buy the wrong vehicle or get them set up wrong, it dramatically impacts their life. So we want to make sure we do that right?

 

John Gough [00:27:30]:

Yeah. Doing that right is particularly hard in the model that we’re focused on in this show. Right. That b, two b to C or b, two b, two b, where you’ve got that mediated sale. Talk to us about how you support your dealers and how you train them to make sure that they are matching your message, but also how they’re delivering the kind of consulting that you’re just describing and the customers actually getting the right best fit for what they need.

 

Nate Buelow [00:27:57]:

Yeah, I think we’ve got an incredible dealer network, so we’ve got 2400 stores all across the country. And I want to give a shout to each and every one of those folks. Without them, I don’t know where we’d be. So we sincerely appreciate all the work that they do for us on what we do to try and support them. We do a lot from everything, whether that be creative and buying out our creative to be able to deliver in all of those use cases. I’m sure, as you guys know, hopefully your listeners do as well. But you don’t necessarily always buy out creative to be able to have full use and be able to run no matter where you want in the country. So we do a lot of that stuff.

 

Nate Buelow [00:28:31]:

So that way they’re not investing those resources. We’re doing a lot in terms of lead gen programs for our dealerships. It’s a very competitive market right now, and making sure that our dealers are getting the opportunity to do what they do best, which is put customers into the best vehicles in the marketplace. We got to give them that opportunity. So being able to get them those leads and being able to drive that business is huge for us. But then on the back end of it is education. With our stores, we invest a lot into it. So you’re going to see Ram certified pin program that we do.

 

Nate Buelow [00:29:05]:

And for some of the other brands in Stellantis, they do this as well. But dealers have to go through a bunch of tens of hours of additional training to make sure that they understand both the product, the customer fit and how that product will fit for that customer to be able to get that certification and that it’s big. Right. It just says a level of commitment from both that salesperson as you’re walking into a showroom, as a customer that, hey, this person knows what they’re talking about. They’re going to give me the right truck for what I need. But from a salesperson side, it’s a big investment of their time, too, because at the end of the day, if they’re not selling they’re not making money. And again, we really appreciate it because it gives us the best opportunity to compete against some of our competitors head to head and have some of the best salespeople in the industry to do that.

 

Kyler Mason [00:29:54]:

Robert, how do you support on the, you mentioned lead Gen? On the lead gen side, where I mean, dealers are by and large getting a lot more sophisticated in their own ability to drive demand, capture local demand. How are you complementing what they’re focused on with what you’re doing on the lead gen side?

 

Nate Buelow [00:30:11]:

Yeah, I think for us what we try to do is communicate early and often with our stores of what we’re doing. So it’s everything from acquiring some of the third party leads that are out there in the marketplace. There are a ton of lead aggregators that can buy and sell those things. You know, we’ve worked with some of the best and some of the ones that probably had a better opportunity to filter and do quality checks, but we’ve done those learnings. So that way an individual dealer, no matter where they are in the country, they don’t have to go through a lot of those struggles. We know here’s something that works, here’s something that converts, and we give feedback too. We don’t always do it right. Without a doubt.

 

Nate Buelow [00:30:46]:

We have an executive dealer counsel that we go through and meet with once a quarter, and God bless them that they’re super honest and they give us a lot of really good feedback, but that helps us filter it out. But even some of the new products like Google, is listed out right now in the vehicle listing ads for us. That’s really important and it changes the search dynamic of how we buy. I remember when I started in autos, tier one bought spot number one in paid search tier two bought spot number two and tier three could have, you know, the sidebar in spot number three, but that’s not the way it works anymore. Right. So even how we adapt our buys to those vehicle listing has to be not bidding against our dealers, still being able to showcase our inventory the same way an EcOM brand would, but selling through a dealer. At the end of the day, we need those dealers to sell those vehicles. It’s a whole other dynamic.

 

Nate Buelow [00:31:38]:

There’s a lot that we can do and buy at a national level that’s really impactful, really important, and we can buy it at scale drives efficiency for our dealers. We can buy those pieces and put them to work for them, deploying local creative offers that they’re helping us upload and be able to showcase local inventory. So that piece is really great and really efficient. But then you’ve got a bunch of other advertising the dealer still has to do to be able to drive their business. At the end of the day, they’re an independent franchise and they’ve got a lot of work to do for themselves and what they want to build up for their brand, where we try to provide assets to those stores. So that way they’re advertising, they’re messaging things the way that they want with really great footage that they didn’t have to go pay out and shoot. Because we know content production is one of the most expensive things that any business can make an investment in. And they’re still able to get that local message out there.

 

Nate Buelow [00:32:28]:

So resonating locally is absolutely still critical. How we do it is still. We’re still growing and still evolving, and I’m sure we will as more ad formats continue to grow out there. And it’ll just be a fun ride, I’m sure, for the next few years as tech just keeps evolving.

 

John Gough [00:32:45]:

Yeah. In some of the industries that we’re observing, there’s a lot of dealer consolidation. And so we’re starting to see this has been true for a while, but even more so these days. Big dealer groups that are starting to have more and more control, and especially financial control over the oems that they’re traditionally servicing. Sort of the power dynamic is flipping on its head. Ram’s big enough that I don’t imagine that that’s happening to you, but talk to us about the dynamic of a powerful dealer, and you say that you had this executive council. What does it look like when they come into a room like that, and how much authority do they have versus how much service do they have to provide?

 

Nate Buelow [00:33:28]:

It’s a great question, and I think that the way we try to view it is our dealers really are our partners. Right? If they’re winning, we’re winning. And we need to do everything that we can to help instill that and ensure that that happens. To your point, in consolidation? Yeah. It’s an ever changing dynamic in the world, right? There’s no longer just 2400 mom and pops out there that are all independent businesses. You’ve got some of these mega groups that have bought up stores across brands and across industries. In a lot of cases that, yes, they do have a little bit more buying power, a lot more cloud, a lot more infrastructure than one to one stores used to have. But I would say that doesn’t detract from anything, because we’ve got, you mentioned the executive dealer council that we have.

 

Nate Buelow [00:34:14]:

They’re some of the brightest minds in automotive and you get to sit down with them and hear definitely some tough conversations at times, and I applaud them for that. That’s not an easy thing to do, to come in and say, these are some areas of opportunity. This is what I need help with to help grow my business, but also some really good ideas that come out of it, of ways to do everything from structuring incentives to marketing opportunities and things like that, and things that we wouldn’t necessarily see at the end of the day. Where our headquarters is just north of Detroit is one place in the world, but that looks a heck of a lot different in southern California than it does in the middle of Texas. And getting that feedback I think is really important because just helps us all be better and at the end of the day drive more business for us.

 

Kyler Mason [00:35:02]:

How do you think AI is going to impact the channel marketing?

 

Nate Buelow [00:35:07]:

That is a great question. I hope we all get the answer to that very soon. We’re seeing it already, I would say, in everything from copywriting to how we summarize descriptions and things like that, where aih, it’s playing a key role. Where I’m very curious to see how it plays out is in that search engine results page and our quality scores and all the other things that our good friends at Google help guide our business with. We’ll just say, well done.

 

John Gough [00:35:35]:

There’s that marketing background. Your euphemism came out.

 

Kyler Mason [00:35:39]:

He’s a pr trained man.

 

John Gough [00:35:40]:

That’s right.

 

Nate Buelow [00:35:42]:

It’s relevant. Right. And I don’t care how big or small your business is, at the end of the day, those things really can impact both the performance of the investments that you make in acquiring new customers and how Google or Facebook or any of the other more popular digital platforms view us. So I don’t know. I’m very excited to see how that’s evolving. We’re already seeing it, I’d say to smaller scale, but it just hasn’t been operationalized yet by a lot of agency partners. But I know everybody’s working really hard to get there fast. Cause that’s, it’s a big shift.

 

Nate Buelow [00:36:15]:

It just is. Just like most industries. I’m also curious to see what it does for people’s websites. I don’t know if you guys have looked around, I would say small to mid sized businesses that I see out in the world. It feels like it’s already there. Like the copy is so precise, so crisp, and things are popping up and down just on a very dynamic basis. It’s, I don’t know, it’s interesting. It’s very interesting to see how it’s changing.

 

Kyler Mason [00:36:43]:

It’s leveled the playing field a little bit.

 

Nate Buelow [00:36:44]:

Yes, indeed.

 

Kyler Mason [00:36:45]:

I, yeah. So in an organization like Ram trucks, how do you test and adopt in a world where I’m just assuming that an.org that size, that might be hard to do. How do you navigate that?

 

Nate Buelow [00:37:02]:

Yeah, it’s a great question. I think what we try to do is bet the majority of our investments on the things that work. Right at the end of the day, we have proven investments. We measure them over time. We’ve talked about that, how iterative we are in those processes and all of that. But you still need to have some money set aside for testing. I won’t name name or I won’t name the social network, cause I don’t wanna give away our trade secret. But we recently tested with a new social network and how we went to market there to try and drive more demand and more people into our website.

 

Nate Buelow [00:37:35]:

Smaller investment to start, especially in the grander scale of where we invest through other platforms. And by and large, the performance was better, the engagement rate was higher, and then we just slowly are shifting more and more money there to understand what that threshold is. So I guess for us, it’s a cautious but strategic approach in knowing that you can’t just keep doing what you did yesterday, because at the end of the day, if you do that, you’re never going to get anywhere. Things are changing too fast, too quickly. AI is going to be in there trying to evolve around us. So we have to be nimble enough to be able to make those, I guess, strategic chances in some cases and dive in.

 

John Gough [00:38:18]:

I think that’s a great observation, and I see it in three different buckets. You’ve got the actual performance and you as a marketer are optimizing and tweaking the knobs and trying to make that thing work. You’ve got this AI conversation that we’re having separately about really the environment that’s evolving around you. I’ll put Google in that bucket. But really the invisible hands that are changing things that you can’t control. Well, the one that you kind of alluded to is also, I think, really important. And that’s the leadership piece of it that you are providing, that is seeing these opportunities and being willing to test and then also being able to communicate those effectively back up and down the chain, which I see some marketing leaders more effective and some less effective at advocating for. Hey, here’s 80%.

 

John Gough [00:39:07]:

We’re going to continue to invest in the things that have always worked and the tried and true 20% or however risky you’re feeling is going to go into optimization and experimentation. I think that your or any marketing leader’s ability or willingness to guide those conversations both up and down the chain about how are we expanding, what is the new horizon for where we are. I think that’s critically important for somebody like you in your role. But leaders across the company, I agree.

 

Nate Buelow [00:39:38]:

And I think that’s one of the pieces that we’re all trying to figure out, right, is how we do that, how we manage up through it. It’s no different than what 1520 years ago when having a website was a big deal. And it’s like guys, we should really invest in buying ramtrucks.com and making that domain purchase. It’s now just a very different conversation. But it permeates through everything that we’re doing, whether that be design, whether that be creative and how we can modify things, whether that be user experience. So I guess no clean path on the AI front, but a path that thankfully everybody has a level playing field on and that we’re all going to have to learn and adapt through together. Is this just. It becomes more and more prevalent in everything that we do, whether it’s us in marketing or gosh, even manufacturing.

 

Nate Buelow [00:40:32]:

A good friend of mine designs how things move through a plant. They’re using that as data feeds to be able to take all of that information and be able to process it and make things more efficient. It’s just a ever changing world that we’re living in on that front.

 

John Gough [00:40:50]:

Nate, what havent we asked you that you think that we should be talking about?

 

Nate Buelow [00:40:55]:

I would say the one thing that I think is really interesting right now is the transition of powertrains in our marketplace. We even talked a little bit about that, but its such an ever changing world. I would say the one thing that im really excited about that Ram is doing that none of our competitors are quite yet, is our new Ram charger truck. So that one’s coming out next year. That truck is going to be a first of its kind, a best of its kind, I should say it’s the only one. But the big difference with that is it’s got all the things that you love about EV’s, right. The ride quality, the quietness inside the cabin, push and go start. All of that stuff is there.

 

Nate Buelow [00:41:46]:

But the difference is where some of those, I’ll say range anxiety, I think is probably the best way to frame it that a lot of folks have intrepidation and making the full transition to EV. You don’t have that because you’ve got a generator that’s up front of that truck that will run on gas and be able to drive that power all the way to the batteries and ultimately to the wheels at any point in time. So you’ve got 690 miles of range in that truck. Plus you can tow and haul and all the things that we know our customers want to do with it. I’m not here to be a product shell for it, but that type of technology is. And it’s the same type of technology that’s in modern day locomotives, right? That’s what makes them so versatile and be able to tow and haul the things that they do. I’m really excited to see that permeating other ways throughout the industry, because for folks that aren’t quite ready to go full EV, it’s a great transition for it. And you will fall in love the minute you get behind the wheel of it and you get all those EV benefits without any of the risk.

 

Nate Buelow [00:42:50]:

It’s absolutely incredible.

 

Kyler Mason [00:42:53]:

What do you think will be your biggest messaging challenge with that product?

 

Nate Buelow [00:42:57]:

It’s a good question, and I think it’s just the complexity of it. Right. Because it hasn’t been done before. We’ve got a lot of work to do to educate on what that is, why that is how it all works together. The fact that, yeah, you can plug it in to charge a battery and still get the range that you can get out of just a pure battery mode. But when you’re driving down the road and that engine or that generator, I should say, is idling at 1200 rpms, then I’d be surprised by that, because it’s just drawing a little bit of power into that battery and being able to push that out. It’s different and it’s unique, but it’s also, I would say, in the presale, one of the things that we’re most excited about from a customer perspective and a product perspective is bringing that out to get them, I would say, into that new, evolving powertrain.

 

John Gough [00:43:43]:

I think you’re keen in on something really interesting there, and that is the need to bring the customer along gradually into an environment that’s shifting relatively rapidly. We’ve had plug in hybrids for a long time at this point, but the plug in pickup truck is not something that a lot of people who are traditional pickup enthusiasts tend to be really excited about. But the hybrid, the hybrid move there makes a lot of sense. I drove one, I guess, a couple of weeks ago, and it was smooth and it was easy and felt like there was nothing behind it. We were towing a trailer. It was no big deal. And I just. I’m like you.

 

John Gough [00:44:23]:

I fell in love. It was great.

 

Nate Buelow [00:44:24]:

Yeah. The good news is, is that consumer tastes are different no matter where you go. Right. Some folks do want a pure EV pickup truck, and they want all the versatility that you get with it, but all the things that they love about Ev. And for the folks that are ready today, we’re going to have that come to market here later this year. You’ll see the rev and its first installments. Great. We got you covered.

 

Nate Buelow [00:44:47]:

If you’re a gas or a diesel fan and you’re used to it. And you know, Mike Cummins, I’ve got sitting out front, it’s got 600 miles of range in it, and I can tow and haul just about anything I’d ever dreamed of. Great. We got that solution for you, especially in our new hd trucks that’ll be revealed later this year. But then Ram Charger is just innovative technology, and I use it. The example I’ve used a lot is in places where charging infrastructure maybe isn’t what you’d want it to be. Whether that be your home, whether that be in public. I pick on Southern California.

 

Nate Buelow [00:45:21]:

It’s great, though. You have charging infrastructure all over the place. If you’re in Iowa, it’s not as developed in certain cases. So I just say having those options is, I think, where ultimately the market is shifted to. You just need to be able to meet customers wherever they are, in whatever they want to do, and deliver a product that’s ready for them.

 

John Gough [00:45:44]:

Love that.

 

Kyler Mason [00:45:45]:

If you were to find yourself in an environment where you were a part of an emerging b, two b, two c company battling for new market share, what would be the first things you do to position yourself to get results?

 

Nate Buelow [00:45:58]:

For me, I’d start with the customer. What customer are we chasing? What solution are we bringing for that customer? What problem are we solving for them to make their lives easier and find a way to, I guess, showcase that exploit that be able to get that customer into our product as quickly as possible? I would say the best product marketer or one of the best product marketers of all time in Steve Jobs. I mean, when the iPod came out in its original form, it solved the consumer issue. You no longer had to carry around your big book of cds. At least that’s what I had in my vehicles at the time. And I had all my songs on my little iPod and it was simple, it was intuitive and I didn’t need to think much about it. And to me that that was the solution. And in that example, at least when I think it was, Zoom was one of the big competitors from Microsoft at the time, came out, they put them to shame by just calling out how simple, how easy it was and what the problems that the product was solving.

 

Nate Buelow [00:46:55]:

So to me, that’s a best in class example of how to break in and both gain a ridiculous amount of market share that still dominates to this day. And to shut your cost or your competitors right out of business. Yeah, I couldn’t tell you the last time I seen a Zoom or a Microsoft portable music player because it worked right, and they just listened to their customers.

 

Kyler Mason [00:47:18]:

There were thousands of MP3 s. So what would you do to get close? Like what tactically would you do to get close to the customer and understand their problems?

 

Nate Buelow [00:47:28]:

I think once we have that consumer design in mind of who are the people that we’re chasing, what do they want to do? The piece I tell a lot of marketers is go to events where your customers are, because there is no better place to get feedback than whether that’s a trade show in a b, two b environment or a consumer show in whatever the industry is and listen to what they have to say to you because they’re going to be honest, they’re not going to hold anything back and they’re going to give you that honest feedback of what they’re looking for. We talked a little bit about I love off roading stuff, so I go to jeep shows and all that all the time. If you walk around there and there are a million aftermarket products in that off road world, and you go to some of these shows, you see them all over the place. But the most interesting thing is the feedback that you get from those customers is they’re walking around there and saying, oh, I don’t really like this, or wow, this changed my life. This one little piece of metal did x, y and z for me. So no matter the product segment that you’re in, I would say, go have that experience because people are going to tell you what they think. They’re going to be excited about it or angry, and you’re at least going to know where you stand.

 

Kyler Mason [00:48:39]:

Do you make your team get out there?

 

Nate Buelow [00:48:41]:

Absolutely. I think that’s the only way that you really get honest feedback. If you haven’t been a product specialist in an event for any product, I don’t care what it is, then you’re doing yourself a disservice as a marketer because you’re going to hear the verbatims directly from your customers, not in a PowerPoint slide, not clipped down and edited and formulated together from a voice of the customer survey. It is the voice of the customer. And in my opinion, it makes you a better marketer for that because you’re there and you have to defend. There’s no saving grace. It’s just you and a customer having a real conversation about the efficacy of your product. So I highly encourage you that even as a digital native, invaluable.

 

Kyler Mason [00:49:24]:

Totally. We, as a marketing firm, started to go to events, actually last year, started to go to some events that our customers, our target customers are at. And after those experiences, we’ve packed the year full of as many events as we can go to. So I totally agree.

 

Nate Buelow [00:49:42]:

Absolutely. And at the end of the day, to go and activate, it’s usually a relatively cheap date, especially depending on how you’re going in there. Right. It’s the most cost effective customer research you’ll ever have.

 

Kyler Mason [00:49:54]:

Yeah, totally.

 

John Gough [00:49:55]:

I think there’s something informative for marketers having to open the oven of customer engagement right on their own face and, like, get that close lost experience that salespeople have every single day. It’s like, no, I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t like what you do. I don’t like your stuff. Like, oh, okay. Wow, that feels different than reading the Internet.

 

Kyler Mason [00:50:15]:

I got to tell you a story. I went to, like, a farm building show for a client way back when, and we helped design the booth. And the booth was a farm building. It was, it was the coolest thing from our point of view, but for real. And then we go and we walk in and the sales team comes up and they’re like, so we need to tell you every problem with this. And they, like, walked through the whole, like, experience that we designed. Like, this is not how the customer would experience this. This is not this.

 

Kyler Mason [00:50:46]:

And we’re like, oh, my gosh. Have to get out and understand the product and its environment and how the users are experiencing it. The customers are experiencing it. So that was an experience I will always remember.

 

Nate Buelow [00:50:59]:

No doubt. And humbling. Right? Like, and we’ve all been there. Oh, yeah. When you get negative feedback, face to face, unabridged, unaltered, it does change your approach, and it changes the way that you think about those problems for the future, that’s for sure. But it’s also a really good experience. For that exact reason. Right? Like Kyler, clearly that stuck with you and you’ve not forgotten it.

 

Nate Buelow [00:51:20]:

And it’s.

 

Kyler Mason [00:51:21]:

It was like nine years.

 

Nate Buelow [00:51:22]:

There you go. There you go.

 

Kyler Mason [00:51:23]:

I called the team right afterwards. I was like, so we did a thing. Oh, man. I have one last question for you. Are you a rubber ducky guy or not?

 

Nate Buelow [00:51:34]:

I guess I can go on the fence either way. I would say I actively don’t put them out most of the time just cause they take up space in my jeep. But I do have a. Yeah. If I could show you on the other side, I have a collection of a bunch of them from going to shows and stuff that is just part of the culture now, right. Whether you like it or not, is a jeep fan. It’s. And for anybody that doesn’t know, that’s the tradition, right? Is when you see a cool jeep, you have a little rubber ducky.

 

Nate Buelow [00:52:00]:

You put it on a jeep and it started, gosh, three, four years ago. Now it’s just part of the culture at this point. So whether you like it or not, it’s here to stay, that’s for sure. And it’s definitely one of those sticky viral things that the jeep community has done. And at the end of the day, it’s really fun. If nothing else, you can make a kid’s day by doing it. When they see one hanging on a door handle around the hood, they really get excited about it. And I would say this, the one piece that’s really interesting of that subculture within jeep is some of the stories that come out of it.

 

Nate Buelow [00:52:33]:

Right? When. If you go to like, smoky Mountain Jeep invasion, I don’t know when this is going to air, but is going on right now or will be here in mid August. And that’s one of the largest jeep events in the world. And you go there and you see people using them for promotional usage. Right? Like, go buy my product for it. But also some really sweet and sincere stories of loved ones that have passed that were jeep enthusiasts. And this is a personalized duck that commemorates their, you know, favorite person in their life and they’ve got a little tie off card for it. I mean, what a great way to celebrate that person’s life, that jeeping Washington, in a lot of cases, a big part of.

 

Nate Buelow [00:53:07]:

So that’s, I think that’s the cool part about it, is it’s just taken on a life of its own. And now it does all sorts of things and it’s all community driven at the end of the day, right? Like no marketing person in chief sat down and decided, rubber ducks, this is the way to go. We need to decide this in our.

 

Kyler Mason [00:53:25]:

And if they did, they deserve a race.

 

John Gough [00:53:29]:

We did a focus group, and we’ve decided that rubber ducks are what we need.

 

Nate Buelow [00:53:32]:

Yeah, it’s a really interesting story. I won’t go into it here because I will butcher it. But the woman that started it has a really compelling story, and I’ll have to send it to you guys after the call, so I don’t butcher it here. But it’s a really interesting way that she took the approach to celebrate and highlight something that she thought was compelling, something that was fun. And again, it’s just a great story.

 

John Gough [00:54:00]:

All right, Nate, this has been fantastic. Thanks so much for coming on. We really enjoyed it.

 

Nate Buelow [00:54:05]:

Yeah.

 

Kyler Mason [00:54:06]:

Thank you.

 

Nate Buelow [00:54:06]:

Thank you, guys. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on.

 

John Gough [00:54:08]:

Why you win is presented by Element three, a marketing firm focused on modernizing go to market strategies for manufacturers that sell through complex distribution channels. We help leaders solve problems across demand generation, sales, channel support, and brand development.

 

Kyler Mason [00:54:25]:

If you’d like more from myself or John, connect with us on LinkedIn. And for more from Element Three, visit elementthree.com. that’s elementthree.com.