Are Gen-Z right about influencer marketing?

It feels like everyone is trying to be an influencer these days, but can incorporating ‘viral content’ into your marketing strategy really work for your local dealership? 

In this episode of Dealer Confidential, host Ilana Shabtay speaks with Jon Frederick, founder and CEO of Freddy Media, about the evolving role of social media influencers in the automotive industry. They discuss the benefits of user-generated content (UGC) for dealership sales and explore strategies to leverage social media for driving sales within the dealership’s local community and beyond.

Here’s what one anonymous dealer had to say:

Dear Ilana,

I’m glad that dealerships are getting fresh blood in their teams, but their priorities aren’t always right. I see it a lot that they spend so much time trying to go viral online, when they should be spending more time following up on leads or calling the dealership’s existing clients. Young salespeople need to stop trying to be influencers! 

Sincerely,

A Less-Than-Fresh Auto Veteran

Ilana and Michael dive into:

• If young salespeople are right to be focusing on social media; 
• The generational gap in the approach to social media in the automotive industry;
• The value of content creation in building brand trust;
• Who should be responsible for online brand promotion. 

After working in retail automotive for 10 years and completing his MBA at University of Florida, Jon Frederick founded Freddy Media which supports content creators and brand create impactful collaborations. Jon specializes in creating automotive media products and bringing them to market. 

Resources mentioned:

• Ilana Shabtay
• Jon Frederick
• Freddy Media
• Russ Flips Whips
• Grok
• Rohrman Toyota

Episode Transcript:

Jon (00:00)

You shouldn’t do this thinking that you’re incapable of going viral. You can go if your hook is good and if your camera angle is good

Ilana Shabtay (00:03)

Right.

Yeah.

Ilana Shabtay here with Dealer Confidential, where we take anonymous hot takes from the industry and talk about them with industry experts. Today I have an old friend, a great auto veteran. I’m so excited to have him on the pod with us, Jon Frederick, owner, CEO, founder, Freddy Media. Hey, Jon, what’s up?

Jon (00:52)

Hey,

Ilana, thank you so much for having me on the show and thanks for walking through my ambiguous title and my fake job.

Ilana Shabtay (00:55)

So happy now.

It’s it’s it might be fake, but it’s working. We’re excited. I really I think it’s such a great business model and exactly what the automotive industry needs. And we’ll get into that because why do I have you on the show today? Today’s anonymous hot take is we got someone they actually didn’t say what they do in automotive. So it could be a dealer, could be could be a vendor, not sure, wrote to us, young salespeople need to stop trying to be influencers.

Jon (01:01)

Hahaha

Right.

Ilana Shabtay (01:24)

And I

saw it and I was like, okay, let’s get Jon on here. Let’s talk about it. Agree or disagree?

Jon (01:29)

Yeah, I am the guy to

ask that because I waste my time every day talking to the 25 year old salespeople that are influencers and like, you know, it’s so I’m, 35. So these people are 10 years younger than me and they’re all kind of like, there is a generational gap. They’ve never seen the movies I’ve seen, but you know, I’ve heard that feedback before. And I would just say to you Ilana if they’re not, if they’re not doing that, what should they be doing?

Ilana Shabtay (01:53)

Yeah. And also like, I agree with the generational gap for myself. I’m obviously very close to your age and I don’t think I could ever be an influencer, but hey, I follow a million influencers and I’m so invested in their lives. I wish, No, but I’m saying it works. I mean, this is, this is what works, right? And you’re super close to the, to the business model and, and specifically how it elevates dealers  and their marketing and

Jon (02:06)

Ilana you could be an influencer.

Right.

Ilana Shabtay (02:20)

And we should talk about that so we can give some insight because I really do think as dealers are also looking for what type of personas they should be hiring for the next gen of sales teams and BDCs, should they be looking at this?

Jon (02:24)

Right. ⁓

Yeah, in a lot of ways they already have it. When we go to train a dealership on how to do organic social media and create user generated content that’s either good for leads, reputation management, or employee engagement, every time somebody raises their hand, they say, I have 50,000 followers on my account where I restore my old Bronco. And like every dealer looks at me and goes, I didn’t know that.

Ilana Shabtay (02:52)

Interesting.

Jon (02:56)

And it’s every time. like there are people at your dealership that are already creating content that already have successful accounts. And as Russ Flips Whips always said, you know, he’s like, he is the savant, the king of it. He says you’re either producing content or you’re consuming content.

And the reason retail automotive is so good for this is because we hire these people for their personalities. We hire them because they’re kind of like me. They can’t shut up. And then, you know, we need to kind of orient their powers for good. And the other reason it works is because there’s so many people at a rooftop. There’s a finance department, a sales department, a service department, a parts department. All of these people can be posting insight, satire, whatever they do about their specific job.

Ilana Shabtay (03:13)

Thank you.

Jon (03:40)

And the sum total of everybody posting up to the rooftop is pretty impactful, especially on your local region. And that’s the premise here is if everybody’s posting,

the sum total of your 50 employees posting on all platforms of social media starts chipping away at your dependence on paid advertising. And you also get recruitment outcomes and like Russ has videos ranking on Google and TikTok and Instagram for common purchasing terms such as negative equity. What is Russ’s enterprise value or his SEO value on his goofy male Karen videos that are really about

how to get a car appraised, how to do an automotive appraisal at a dealership. So that ranks above Carvana. So how much is that worth? $2 million? And it’s there for the taking, especially when we were in Australia, it was green pastures. They hadn’t even touched it yet.

Ilana Shabtay (04:18)

you.

So interesting. So SEO value, trust in a brand, like brand value. Obviously there’s like competitive edge. If you have personalities out there, then people are going to choose your dealership over others. When it comes to the geography, obviously you want as local as possible so that people come in and buy. But when it comes to like SEO, for example, what’s the value for dealerships? Own that. Yeah.

Jon (04:42)

Yeah.

Yeah, let me tell you. So

every, mean, you know better than I do. And in where you are, I think you’re in Tel Aviv today. Like that is, that is Google central. That’s like where Google really like does everything worthwhile, but Russ, me, my team, we kind of believe that Google is seeding market share every day. So every day Google is seeding market share for search to both the social platforms and the AI platforms that aren’t Gemini, but Grok and all the other ones. And then.

Ilana Shabtay (05:00)

I am.

Yeah.

Correct.

Jon (05:21)

Suddenly, Ilana and I are about the same age and you and I are probably still Google people. But if you were to, if our younger cousins that are like 20 to 32 start Googling where to buy a car in Jacksonville, Florida.

They’re going to TikTok first. And then at the very least, even if they find the car they want to buy on Google or, you know, one of the platforms, they’re going to verify what the place looks like through Instagram and TikTok. That is the nature of like,

identity verification or reputation management is before I’m going to drive across town to go get an appraisal I’m going to look at TikTok to see if these people have a pulse or Instagram and if they don’t I might look around a little more so it’s good even if it’s just like a verification that this is a bright smiley face to do business and also it’ll start ranking regionally and the platforms. You asked about how do you regionalize it? There’s tips and tricks and please you know

subscribe to the goofy training company Russ and I spun up but the platforms are so good at localizing right now. Before we got on this call Ilana and I were laughing because Russ went viral in Australia because him and I couldn’t figure out how to pump gas. It’s just totally on the trust system. You pump gas you walk inside the guy I said to the guy at the counter is anybody ever stolen gas and he was like Yeah, I don’t think anybody ever has it’s like an unthinkable thing and so right

Ilana Shabtay (06:28)

today.

I’d let an American

know.

Jon (06:42)

In America,

we steal gas. Russ makes that video and it goes completely viral. I think two and a half million views, something that is like a common outcome for him here in America. However, only 1 % of the views were from his following. So right now the platforms automatically regionalize. They also understand context of what you’re saying. And then the really

Ilana Shabtay (06:59)

Right,

Jon (07:04)

hot thing that I think everyone needs to capitalize on is that TikTok ate everyone’s lunch over the past five years. So much that, you know, it was like a, it was a Chinese spyware threat and we had to ban it. But I think what was really going on is they allowed everybody to effectively play a lottery ticket and they started rewarding, correctly formatted content that did really well in the algorithm. So now every other platform is trying to emulate that lottery ticket style approach.

So we have people with only like 5,000, 6,000 followers that we’re training that are getting a couple million views on videos. And then the outcomes for that are insane. Like you should,

You shouldn’t do this thinking that you’re incapable of going viral. You can go viral if the, if your hook is good and if your camera angle is good

Ilana Shabtay (07:44)

Right.

Yeah.

Jon (07:48)

and yes.

Ilana Shabtay (07:49)

right? How is consistency, that’s

like a big, a big thing. But you mentioned this, you mentioned briefly AI, Grok, obviously not Gemini, we were trying to talk about how Google’s going to be obsolete. But let’s say ChatGPT and all of the AI, like the generative AI search stuff. How can get into that world or do they not? Yeah.

Jon (07:56)

Mm-hmm.

Hehehehehe

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, this

weekend…

Ilana Shabtay (08:13)

this.

Jon (08:13)

Google released VO3 and I don’t know if you’ve seen what that looks like, but I think that every influencer should be afraid because I think where my company goes, you know, I’ve already confessed that I would love for my company to become a publisher and people to follow Freddy Media for the purpose of like, you know, insight and what’s going on in the content business and marketing and the automotive and the cross-section of technology. But I think that where VO is going is people like Ilana and I, when we’re putting our heads together to do a campaign for a company like Fullpath,

Ilana Shabtay (08:16)

Yeah, insane. Insane.

Jon (08:43)

we’re gonna be creating user-generated content and prompting this thing like, know, Francis Ford Coppola telling, you know Al Pacino what to say and Godfather We’re gonna be like giving it very I do it with Grok all the time Russ and I always have contests who can come up with like the dumber Grok image. I came up with a good one. It was like kangaroo wearing Russ’s, you know, stupid glasses holding and like the baby in the pouch, the joey, was filming so like Russ and I constantly have kind of like a prompt

off, but now that VO can do that sort of UGC style video that’s indistinguishable from humans, that like we’re, we woke up this morning in a different world where you may not have to pay people because the value Ilana isn’t really so much asking an influencer to post on their timeline. It’s like creating compelling user generated content that sells and then turning it into a paid ad and giving it some sort of flight. Like,

Ilana Shabtay (09:28)

Really?

Jon (09:38)

There was a great example I stumbled upon this weekend. was the action star, Frank Grillo. He’s kind of like a macho Jason Statham guy. And then the hook was him with like a profane curse word and then talking about his skincare routine. So it was kind of funny, tough guy.

Ilana Shabtay (09:52)

Yeah.

Jon (09:54)

skincare routine,

but I sent it to my team and I was like, guys, this is how good user generated content is getting. Like Frank Grillo, like an A list Hollywood actor is doing stupid little skincare skits. And that’s, that’s where the market is right now. And VO threatens that. But in the meantime, you have to start producing like really good user generated content.

Ilana Shabtay (10:11)

Yeah.

Yeah, but also do you think, so A, yes, it might threaten it, but do you think that influencers can actually leverage it and figure out how to come, how can they train these AI search platforms to actually spit out their videos as a response?

Jon (10:31)

Right. I planned on trying that out this morning. I’m to, I don’t care how much VO costs, I’m going to like pay for it and figure out what to do with it. And then in the meantime, I think that people who work at dealerships need to understand the fundamentals of content creation. the reason I’m so passionate about this is like the first day I met Russ, we ordered, I’ve told the story 3 million times. I ordered a pizza, delivery guy comes to the door and he said, holy S word, your Russ Flips Whips.

Ilana Shabtay (10:36)

Yes.

Jon (11:00)

I’ve been trying to blow up on social media. And Russ grabs like a stranger’s phone and he says, let me see what you’ve been doing. And it’s like an adult man. And Russ is like, all right, say this, do this. Russ starts directing a stranger in like how to create content for the pizza industry. He’s teaching him how to edit and post on CapCut. He hits publish, sends the guy on his way. And we’re sitting on the couch eating pizza an hour later.

Ilana Shabtay (11:02)

Nope.

It’s crazy.

Jon (11:24)

And he hit, Russ shows me the video 500,000 views. And I’m like, am I standing before a savant or like what, what the hell’s going on here? And he said, no, it’s actually just very replicable. If you go with like insider satire and you do the hook correctly in the, the video flows in a certain way and you publish it strategically everywhere, you can almost ensure success to, to a high likelihood. And that’s what we’ve been trying to replicate. And that’s what we’ve effectively been teaching.

Ilana Shabtay (11:32)

shit.

That’s a cool story. You should have gotten that on video.

Jon (11:54)

Yeah, well,

you know, it’s that cool outcome, Ilana, is Dave Portnoy saw the video. Dave Portnoy came and interviewed or rated the guy’s pizza on the one bite thing. And then it went, it went from being like the shittiest little dive to like a proper like retail pizza establishment.

Ilana Shabtay (12:02)

Yeah, I thought that’s cool.

That’s awesome.

That’s really cool. That’s an awesome success story that also I feel like, because my next question was going to be more about business owners, dealership owners, buy-in. How can they understand the effect on bottom line from this type of stuff? Yeah, OK, so maybe more people will come in and buy our car, but it’s beyond that. If you think about that example.

Jon (12:24)

Yeah.

Ilana Shabtay (12:29)

turn some dive pizza into like, you know, a place where famous people are coming in and rating the video. Figuring out how to also position it to dealership owners, has that been something, has that been a bottleneck or like, have you kind of figured out the pitch of influencer marketing for billionaires? I know you figured out the pitch.

Jon (12:45)

Yeah, you know, I figured out the pitch a lot, but

the, the value of it is if you walk through a dealership today and it was the same when I was selling cars 10 years ago, you know, we staffed the showroom for the busiest day effectively. I worked at a store that had 55 sales guys. It was really wild. And then in between ups, you generally have some time on your hand and you’re there from nine to nine.

So how are you calling customers all day or do you have time in between candy crush and cigarette? You’re not even allowed to smoke cigarettes anymore. Can you go out and cut a little bit of content? And then can you learn how to do it efficiently? So you’re like batching content and then can you be publishing and like the outcome we’ve trained dealers where their social media direct messages are their third biggest lead source for the group.

Ilana Shabtay (13:18)

Yeah.

Right, and there’s the…

Jon (13:33)

So like, what, what the hell do you even do with that? They’re closing more through their social DMs than these other avenues that they’re paying $50,000 a month for. So how do you kind of grow that? Yeah. And then also, you know, Austin Conroy at Rohrman Toyota was the first guy who ever let us train his store with Zach Kinch.

Ilana Shabtay (13:34)

write anything. Yeah.

Right. So it’s more possible than. Right.

Jon (13:53)

And that was like, that was me and those guys. were like Vince McMahon. We were putting on like a fake Plinko board sale. It was a real sale, but like we were promoting it and kind of like Vince McMahon fashion, challenging them, Russ replying to, that was one of the craziest things we’ve ever done. And then.

You know, now when they needed to replace a service advisor and a service director and a technician at the Rohrman group last week, they asked Austin to post about it. And then they’ve, they filled everything by the end of the week. So, you know, and then like people fly, fly from all over to buy cars from you. And, you know, if you’re in Indianapolis, it’s not uncommon for somebody from Chicago to drive and buy a car from you just because it’s fun. And then what are those people like when they show up, Ilana, those people that are coming because

Ilana Shabtay (14:20)

Yeah, wow.

That’s it.

Jon (14:38)

because they’re infatuated with your online presence. What are they like? Are they real crusty, tough to negotiate, or are they absolute laydowns that almost feel like they’re talking to a celebrity? Yes.

Ilana Shabtay (14:48)

They’re starstruck. So they come totally

weak. I mean, I don’t want to say weak, but they come in a different position. Yeah, wow, that’s wild.

Jon (14:53)

Yeah.

And it’s just like, what do you want to be doing? You know, we’re there all day and you could be sitting there playing Candy Crush and watching TikTok or you can be doing this and driving your own outcome. Did you see my stupid video I made about me and the kangaroo? I’ll text it to you when I’m done. Yeah.

Ilana Shabtay (15:10)

No, but you should send it to me.

I feel like I usually do see your content, but I might not have seen that. So basically, if we’re going to talk to this anonymous hot take, or hot person who submitted this anonymous hot take, I’m sorry, but your salesmen and women should be influencers. It’s going to help your business. I mean, Jon just laid it out for you.

Jon (15:16)

send it to you.

Yeah.

Yeah, well,

I’ll make an offer to the anonymous TikToker that I’ll pay for their login to RussFlipsWips training course. And if they don’t go viral within a month by actually doing it, then like, I don’t know, I’ll…

Send them a free hat, but I’ll like give them a free login. Yeah, I’ll give them a free login to Russ’s thing. Like feel free to come forward, raise your hand, say it was me. I was the guy who was like, I was the stick in the mud complaining that other people were really successful while I was like crusty and not having fun. If you admit to being that guy, I’ll pay the fee for you to be in Russ’s training course.

Ilana Shabtay (15:46)

Haha, it was that? Really?

Jon (16:05)

And I actually have like other people from outside of like automotive proper in the course, because I think it.

gives them a really good understanding of what it’s like inside the showroom when they’re shoulder to shoulder coming up with ideas with these guys. Like I know Rudy at Mavsign, he’s logged into the course. Joe Guerra, who’s the general manager at Dealer Club, which is an automotive auction. He’s in the course. And if you look at the way these guys start producing content, I know we built an automotive oriented one, but they all the fundamentals are in there. And yeah, let’s give this crusty, angry, complaining person a free login.

Ilana Shabtay (16:19)

Yeah.

That’s us.

Yeah, let’s do it. If you come forward, Mark Jon’s words, he just gave you some gold right there.

Jon (16:46)

What’s like

our two factor authentication to make sure I’m not giving away free logins? First come first serve.

Ilana Shabtay (16:51)

Yeah, you should have that. That’s important. Anyway, Jon, thank you so

much. First of all, amazing to reconnect with you because I told you we miss you around here. Good to have you on the podcast. And exciting to hear what you guys are doing and what your take is on influencers. I think it’s the next big thing for automotive dealers.

Jon (17:10)

Thanks, Ilana. It works B2B as well. I think everybody needs to know that. It’s almost even better B2B. No, I really believe in it as a B2B thing. All right.

Ilana Shabtay (17:13)

Yeah. ⁓ here he goes pitching. That’s the Jon I know. Got it, got it, B2B.

All right, well for our listeners, if you enjoyed this, you can find Dealer Confidential on all your favorite podcast streaming sites. Thank you again, Jon. We’ll have you back soon.

Jon (17:32)

See ya.