Your marketing mix is the set of ways you market your business—like which platforms you use and what you say. The episode is saying dealerships should think about messaging and reputation, not just ads.
Brand safety means you want your dealership’s marketing to look good and be associated with the right kind of content. It’s not enough that people click—you also want the message to match who you are and protect your reputation.
Vanity metrics are “looks good” numbers like clicks or views. They can be helpful, but they don’t always mean the marketing is actually bringing in buyers.
They’re talking about TikTok as a place dealerships can reach customers with short videos. The point is that posting isn’t enough—you have to say the right things for the dealership’s image.
They mention Instagram as another social app dealerships use to post videos. Like TikTok, the key is making sure the content fits the dealership and doesn’t just chase views.
Murgado auto group is referenced as the dealership brand whose billboard messaging and social media content are being discussed. The segment uses it as an example of how “family owned” branding and creator-produced TikTok content can either reinforce or undermine brand trust.
USP means “unique selling proposition.” It’s the one clear reason you should pick that dealership instead of others. The hosts are debating whether the “family owned” message really helps customers or is just background noise.
Brand affinity is basically how much people like and trust a brand. If the dealership’s social media content feels off, it can make people less interested or less trusting. That can hurt future sales and word-of-mouth.
SOPs are step-by-step rules for how to do something the same way every time. The idea is to set clear guidelines for who posts what and how, so the dealership’s image stays consistent. It’s about reducing mistakes and reputational risk.
Word of mouth is when customers tell other people about what they saw or experienced. It’s usually more persuasive than ads, but it’s hard to track exactly how many sales it causes.
Impact means the real effect your marketing has on people, not just how many interacted with it. It’s harder to measure because the results show up later, through decisions and conversations.
Ripple effect means one action can spread and affect other people. In this context, one video can change how many people feel about the dealership.
Term
AI
AI is referenced as part of modern social content creation, where it can speed up or automate parts of producing videos. The episode frames it as a potential risk area if it leads to “getting lazy,” which can hurt authenticity and brand perception.
Even if a salesperson posts on their own page, the dealership can still get the credit—or the blame—because the video uses the dealership’s brand and location. That effect tends to stick around online.
Cars.com is a major automotive marketplace where dealers and salespeople can generate leads. The transcript highlights that content may be created on accounts not directly owned by the dealership, which complicates brand control and measurement.
An ambassador is someone who represents your dealership online or in the community. The hosts argue you need to teach them what to say and why, so they don’t accidentally say the wrong thing.
The Honda Accord is a regular passenger car (a sedan) made for everyday driving. People often choose it for commuting, errands, and family trips because it’s comfortable and easy to live with. It may be mentioned in a dealership story because it’s a popular model that many customers buy more than once.
Influencer marketing is when a business uses a popular person on social media to promote them. For car dealers, it can be risky if the influencer isn’t actually knowledgeable about cars or if their content doesn’t match the dealership’s image.
Topic
adjacent lane: spend vs invest
They’re basically saying marketing money can be wasted or can pay off, depending on whether the campaign works. They’re using that idea to talk about influencer/celebrity partnerships.
NADA is a big industry event for car dealers. The hosts are saying everyone there is talking about AI, which is why this topic feels especially timely.
This means it costs more money to get potential customers to raise their hand. Even if you’re buying ads or running campaigns, you can still pay more if people don’t trust the dealership or don’t respond well.
Brand equity is basically how people feel about a business—good or bad. If something went wrong years ago and nobody fixed it, people may not trust you as much, so you end up spending more to get the same results.
It means sending out a ton of marketing messages or leads all at once. If the dealership’s reputation or process isn’t strong, that flood of leads doesn’t turn into sales, so you just burn money.
It means everyone starts on equal footing. They’re saying car sales often has a bad reputation, so dealerships have to work harder to win trust and get the same results as other businesses.
It means posting and updating content really quickly so you stay in front of people. If you’re slow, customers may forget you or choose someone else who’s always showing up.
They’re saying employees should act like ongoing representatives for the dealership. When people hear from real staff consistently, it can make the dealership feel more trustworthy.
“Acquire more stores” and “increase our footprint” refer to dealership group expansion—buying additional locations and growing geographic presence. Expansion increases complexity, so marketing and operations often need standardization to avoid inconsistent brand messaging.
LIVE
All right, gang, here we go live. I am here with my new friend, Don Moss, who's the executive
director of marketing at Murgado Auto Group. Don, thanks so much for joining me on the
dealer playbook. Absolutely. Glad to be here. I'm excited to
chat with you because you have a lot of experience that I want to draw from. The first one is this.
I know that you have worked in media. I know that you are a marketing professional and you have so
much data looking at your dealer group. But the first thing I want to know is what do you see
from a media perspective that dealers should be considering as part of their marketing mix?
That's a great question. I'll tell you something that I think a lot of times people overlook.
Maybe it's brand safety. We go quick to the ads and how to structure the right messaging.
Sometimes we forget about how important it is to consider what that message is really
saying about our company. Is it on point with our brand? Is there any considerations we should be
making bigger than just did it get a click? When you're looking at it, which is interesting because
that is often what people can see. They can see the click. They can see the traffic.
They can see the impressions or what we typically call the vanity metrics.
But from your vantage point, talk to me about the safety piece. What are you thinking about
from the seat that you're sitting in? Oh, wow. The world's changing quick, but
everything is recorded on video now. Everybody's watching video. We're spending hours scrolling
and scrolling. And so it's natural for our teams to think, man, I got to get in the mix. I got to
start making videos. In fact, the industry is encouraging every salesperson at every store
only where you're going to be successful is you get on TikTok. You get on Instagram. You do these
videos. And I don't know that that's wrong. I think that's probably right. Sure. The problem is
how do you execute that, right? Right. And I'm not just talking about the quality of the videos.
I'm not saying, is my lighting right? Do I have the perfect camera? It's more about,
am I saying something that makes sense? Not just as a salesman, but it makes sense for the person
that owns the building. Does it match his values? Does it match what the store as a group is trying
to do? That's a fine line to walk for a young salesman who's just trying to make a card deal
by selling some videos. Oh my gosh, you're bringing something to my mind that
I have not thought about in this way. You drive past the billboards on the freeway that say,
you know, Murgado auto group, family owned and operated for how many years, whatever it might be.
And you go, well, why is that a USP? But now you're bringing something to my mind that I'm like,
because this is a real person. This is a real family that really lives in this area.
And the throughput here that I'm hearing you say is we can't just be so, we have to be more
thoughtful about what we're putting out there because ultimately there is a real family.
You are so right about that. His name, we could be promising. Right. And they have mothers and
wives and daughters and they're involved in our communities. You know, dealers are some of the
most philanthropic community involved businesses in our communities. Right. And then you pair that
to the content that might be being created in their name. Right. And there's a real chance that
it's not that it's not aligned. Right. And you know, what's interesting about this is I've thought
about this. You see a lot of trend content. Drop it like it's hot videos on TikTok and
you've got full grown mid 40s men laying on the floor demonstrating what a four wheel drive looks
and what they may not understand is that they're actually doing that in the name of
Murgado. Yes. And what is the implication of that? What is the downstream effect on brand
affinity or whatever? So how do you position that properly? Is it, hey, no, we don't want you
creating stuff or do you just have to be more intentional in creating, I don't know, standard
operating procedures or like how do you safeguard really? Yeah. Yes. That's a good question too.
So probably the safest way to be absolutely safe is just to say no. We're not doing any of this.
Right. But how short-sighted would that be? Right. So you can't say no. You got to be
very clear about what the expectation is. You got to applaud the effort. Hey, the fact that you
built the business that a whole bunch of young people want to get on the camera and promote
on their own free will, that's a good thing. That's great. Well, why would you ever want to squash that?
Right. You just got to help them understand that what you're doing reflects more than just you.
And yes, you might actually get a car sell out. So you might get a whole bunch of clicks and
sell some cars. What you don't always see is how many people just turned away and walked off,
maybe even in disgust. Right. So I'm happy you sold the car. I'm happy you got 100 clicks.
What you didn't see was there's 10 families now that don't look at us the way they looked at us
before they saw your video and now they're going to go tell their friends and family.
Yes, which is the most powerful marketing, that word of mouth, like measuring that impact.
I had this conversation yesterday. I'm curious your thoughts on it. Somebody asked me,
what is the most valuable metric you think people should be paying attention to? And I said impact,
which also happens to be the hardest thing to measure. To your point, though, I'm feeling,
maybe I'm feeling good. You've affirmed my bias. But I think that is it, because how are you
thinking about the ripple effect implication or impact of even yourself walking into church on
Sunday and everyone's looking at you like, good, because you did a real, that's a really weird
thing. But in a digital age, when things are moving so fast, when it's almost become faux pas to
not be on social, to not be making videos constantly, to not be using AI and getting lazy,
how do you really advocate for this understanding of like, hey, because of all of these things,
you're an ambassador for this business 24 seven now, in a world that's like, no, you pay me to
be here from nine to five. Do you know what I mean? How do you reconcile that? What do you think?
You know, it's a fine line because often, often the content is not even being created on
the social accounts that we own that are our names. Often it's being created on
Donnie Moss, the car salesman sells cars.com. Like it's under a person's somebody by that domain.
Somebody's their own account, right? And then how as a business, am I going to say what you do on
your account? The fact is I can't, right? You're, you're filming on our location, you're using our
name brand, you're, you're asking people to do business with not you with us, right? All that
turns your personal accounts into our shared, our shared activity. It's sticky. It's like chippy a
little bit. It's like, what are your thoughts on enforce sounds so strong and so official,
but I can't think of a better word. How do you enforce that without, like you said in the beginning,
completely discouraging the fact that you have people that are willing to be ambassadors for
your name? You know how anything goes. You can't get everything right, right? You're going to
discourage some people, right? Some people are just going to say, no, well, then if they, they won't
let me do what I want. I'm not doing it. Yeah. But I think most people are pretty logical. I think
if you set them down and really take the time to teach them and show them the why, look, we're not
just trying to sell one more Honda Accord. The owner's trying to buy three more Honda dealerships
and all this plays into that, right? I think if you can help people see that, most people
are going to say, yeah, I get it. Thanks for, thanks for explaining that to me. I get it now.
Most communication. Well, and now I'm thinking of an adjacent lane, which is how much money we
actually spend or invest. If it doesn't work out, it's spend. If it works, it's invest. But how
much money we spend on an agency, perhaps, that then goes out and finds local celebrities to
pedal a message, which message, depending, and I'm generalizing here, may or may not be a great
reflection of, of your brand. So for example, I think, oh my gosh, I can't believe. Controversial
topic of the day. The celebrity who is well loved one week, who you've spent an exorbitant
amount of money on, who two weeks later is caught up in a scandal, but you've already spent all of
that, that marketing money. Yeah, like that's another real world thing, right? And not just
automotive industry, every industry struggles with that. If you tie your brand to someone else's brand,
you're in the same boat now and you're long for the ride, wherever they're taking you.
I think for automotive specifically, look, are there really all that many influencers out there
that are really specific to automotive? There really isn't. So, so you're pushed to find people that
are adjacent or maybe have nothing to do with automotive. Right. And I think that's where
things get a little lost. I live in Miami. There is a lot of crazy content in Miami. That's just
what happens in my neck of the woods. Right. And the crazier, the wilder, the more eyeballs on it.
Acceptable fashion options are vastly different in Miami than they are Dallas, Texas.
I think so. And look, that kind of activity gets a lot of eyeballs and a lot of interest.
Sure. But that doesn't mean that that's the right fit for what we're trying to accomplish.
Right. You've got to be able to decide, look, more than just someone that's going to help me get
eyeballs. Is this person really going to help me either move my brand forward as an image?
Are you going to help me be seen better in the community or when we all love profession
attribution or literally help me sell cars and service? Right. I think that the latter is a
little harder to do. But if you could at least say, is this helping me move my image as a legitimate
member of this community in the right direction, then I think that's the right person. From the
seat that you're sitting in now with, with Murgado Auto Group, who needs to be included in that
conversation from the beginning to make sure that, that we don't lose focus along the way when,
when perhaps something might seem appealing and like, oh shoot, should we be doing that too?
You know, the easiest decisions are made by one person, right? But that's not very practical.
If you're a one rooftop store, yeah, one person in the gym can make that decision. The owner can
make that decision. As you get bigger and bigger and more diverse geographically, you've got to
just establish really clear guidelines that this is what we are willing to allow. This is what we
encourage. This is what we don't allow. And then you got to empower the leaders of that, that rooftop
to know the standards and uphold it. I love this because I don't think and I, that the audience
knows, okay, I'm breaking the fourth wall. The audience knows that I don't say things I don't
mean. And I genuinely think, Don, this is the first time ever on this podcast in over a decade.
I have ever had this conversation. Wow. And we're at NADA. Everybody's talking about AI.
It's like, what's that sign bingo? Was it, but AI was his name? You know, AI, AIO.
We're talking about something that I've never talked about on the show before.
And you're really surfacing for me how incredibly important this conversation is because of the
far reaching implications of it. Maybe you are a single point in a small rural town in the middle
in Doglick, Nebraska. But you're, you are an integral part of that community. And that reputation
either works for you or it really works against you. And I just find so many businesses that are
caused to overspend. They can't figure out why, why are my leads so expensive? Why are my, and is
it because they just have to fire hose, not understanding that maybe 10 years ago, something
happened that wasn't addressed, that is causing a brand equity problem for them.
For sure. Look, look, we sell cars and we know that there's some stigma to it. There just is,
right? Yeah, absolutely. We're not starting at a level playing field. We're starting below that.
Right. And we've got to shine a little bit brighter than other people just to get to level.
And I think that has to be part of what we're thinking about as we're doing content.
Content at the speed of light is what's happening. So we've talked about creating content for people
in the stores, being brand ambassadors, essentially 24 seven, we've talked about having
effective communication with them, which I love by the way, because I don't see many leaders really
discussing this, um, this angle that you've brought up, which is like, Hey, let's talk about this.
I'd like to explain to you the why from our organization's perspective, because there's
probably a point of alignment in the middle. Like you said, they probably get it and go,
yeah, okay, I get it. You're trying to, we've covered a lot of territory. My mind is spinning.
I feel like there's a million more questions that I want to ask. I'm not going to grill you.
I told you I wasn't going to throw you a curveball. I'm no Walter Cronkite, uh, for you young, uh,
Gen Z, uh, listening. There's a reference. You can go look up for some fun trivia after the show.
What are you looking to the next couple of years? What's on your mind that you're saying,
Hey, we really need to focus and pay attention to this, uh, as things begin to evolve. And as
we're looking to acquire more stores and increase our footprint and increase our impact, what,
what's on your mind? What, what's the thought? What, what do we need to be on a lookout for?
Yeah, you know, you know, for us, and I think a lot of people kind of relate for, as you're
adding more and more stores to a group, you got to think, make things a little more simple. You
can't keep adding, bolting on more and more and more. The ability to have just a few less people
in the conversation really helps putting it all together, right? Yeah. So for us, I, I think it's
a matter of how do we build processes? How do we assemble the right collection of people
to, to help us move the next step forward? The next set might be a really big step,
which means it really needs to be a little less complicated, a little bit more boiled down.
Oh, I love that. It's not a return to basics. It's enforcing a foundation. Yeah, I love it.
Well, Don, see how quick this goes when you're having a good time talking about brand safety.
I, I cannot believe it. It's seriously, I can't believe we've never had a discussion about this
on the show. I'd love to have you back at some time because again, I have a million and one
questions, but until next time, how can those listening and, and viewing connect with you?
Hey, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. That's a great way to find me. Don Moss,
happy to talk to anybody. Love this business. Love talking to folks in it.
You're the man. Don Moss, thanks so much for joining me on the dealer playbook. Thanks, bro.
You're the man. Hey, thanks for listening to the dealer playbook podcast. If you enjoyed tuning
in, please subscribe, share and hit that like button. You can also join us and the DPD community
on social media. Check back next week for a new dealer playbook episode. Thanks so much for joining.
About this episode
Murgado Auto Group’s exec director of marketing, Don Moss, breaks down “brand safety” in the age of TikTok and Instagram. The conversation focuses on how dealer teams chase clicks and vanity metrics while overlooking whether salesperson-created content aligns with the dealership’s values and community reputation. Moss argues you can’t just ban social video—you need clear guidelines, training, and shared standards so personal accounts don’t damage brand equity. He also warns about “celebrity/influencer” spend that can backfire when reputations change, and stresses building scalable processes as groups grow.
Is your dealership encouraging team members to "go viral?" You might be seeing the spike in clicks, but are you seeing the real cost? In an age where everyone's a content creator, maintaining brand integrity and a consistent message is harder than ever.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
Why relying on individual salespeople to create "viral" content can undermine your dealership's long-term reputation.
How to communicate brand guidelines to your team so they become brand ambassadors, not brand liabilities.
The critical difference between short-term engagement and sustainable dealer growth through consistent brand messaging.
How to evaluate marketing partnerships to ensure they align with your dealership's values and community standing.
Don Moss, Executive Director of Marketing at Murgado Automotive Group, shares his expertise on brand safety and the hidden implications of content strategy in "automotive retail".
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
00:44 Why Brand Safety Matters
01:39 Social Video Risks
04:19 Setting Content Guardrails
06:50 Personal Accounts vs Brand
08:27 Influencers and Scandal Risk
10:51 Who Owns the Standards
14:13 Simplify for Growth
15:30 Connect and Wrap Up
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