As part of our continuing efforts to celebrate the auto industry and those involved, Digital Dealer is proud to announce the Digital Dealer Awards program for 2024.
A team of independent judges evaluate the submissions and selected the finalists.
The deadline for nominations was Sept. 1 and the Digital Dealer Award winners will be announced during the Digital Dealer Conference & Expo being held this year at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas from October 8-10.
We received 55 nominations for the five categories. Following are the finalists in the five categories:
Best Dealer:
Kristi Alguire, Anderson Auto Group
Greg Freeman, Lilliston CDJR
Liza Myers Borches, Carter Myers Automotive
Best New Product finalist:
Informativ’s Total Solution
Affinitiv’s Activator Suite
Reunion Marketing’s KeyLift and LocalEyes platform
EMG’s Creative-as-a-Service
Best Marketing:
DriveCenter and Demand Local’s Christine Gago
Automotive Marketing Gurus’ Jonathan Thompson, Anthony Morales and Alicia Brooks
Best Use of AI:
Impact Award, defined as high achievers as well as someone who has had positive impact on the industry:
Enrique Gago, COO of DriveCenter Complete Auto Care and CarSparc
Arnold Gacita, CEO, Petra Automotive
Jonathan Thompson, Founder and CEO, Automotive Marketing Gurus
Alicia Brooks, Marketing Director, Automotive Marketing Gurus
Brad Paschal, Market President, Dynatron Software
Besides the recognition from peers and an award to display in your office, nominees and winners will receive recognition in the September/October edition of Dealer Magazine. Winners will be featured in the November/December issue of Dealer Magazine, including interviews highlighting their success in the industry.
Keynote Speakers
#DDCE2024 is a 2.5-day event, Oct. 8-10, 2024, at MGM Grand in Las Vegas that will bring together automotive dealers, OEMs, thought leaders, and solution providers to power business growth and connections. The 2024 Digital Dealer Conference & Expo is your chance to discover innovative solutions and gain cutting-edge strategies, actionable insights, and new ideas to implement for maximum impact.
The expo will have two keynote sessions. Modern Sales Tactics and Strategies to Navigate the New Normal will kick off the event on Oct. 8. Sean V. Bradley, President of Dealer Synergy, Brad Lea, global entrepreneur and host of “Dropping Bombs” podcast, and Nelson Lyles, Managing Partner and GM atWithers Automotive Group, , will be together on stage to equip attendees with the strategies needed to thrive in today’s competitive market.
Bradley, Lea, and Lyles will reveal top sales tactics and best practices to help you dominate today’s evolving automotive market. From innovative recruiting and onboarding strategies to the unconventional yet powerful use of international call centers and BDCs, this session will give you proven blueprints for success you can implement right away.
The next day, hear from the Keynote panel GA4, EVs & AI, Oh My! Join panelists “Big” Al Gillespie of Mark Wahlberg Automotive Group, Kevin Frye of Jeff Wyler Automotive Family, and April Simmons of Horne Auto Group for an engaging conversation moderated by Eliana Raggio from Dealer eProcess.
Attendees will hear how this team of automotive marketing wizards is evaluating marketing effectiveness with GA4, developing initiatives for greater EV sales success, and the plans they are making to survive in a cookie-less world, and so much more. Click your heels together three times and join us—because there’s no place like a live presentation filled with innovative strategies, actionable insights, and industry wisdom!
New Exhibitors, New Voices
One of the best parts about attending the Digital Dealer Conference & Expo is meeting new friends. And #DDCE2024 is no exception.
The floor of the MGM Grand will feature over 20 new exhibitors covering a range of expertise in marketing, CRM & DMS Solutions, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, payment platforms and so much more. They include Advent Resources, AIM Cruise Incentives,
Authenticom, Bedford Advertising, Call Tracking Networks, Call Tracking Networks, CarRx by Elo GPS, Coopable, Desklog.aI, Detect Auto, Divinia.ai, DocuPhase, Hippoc.ai, jamloop.com, Keller Creative Agency, Mountain.com, myKaarma, RockED, SelectFI, UVeye, Vettx, Yooz, VSnew, and WYN Solutions.
This year, we have new leaders in the automotive industry that will give presentations over the three days at the conference on subjects such as advertising, social media, customer experience, artificial intelligence and much more. Check out some of this year’s first-time speakers at #DDCE2024 and the subject of their sessions such as Ashley Bales, Social Media and Special Projects Manger with Mark Miller Subaru, CallRevu’s CEO Ben Chodor, Ali Haeri, SVP of Marketing for MNTN, VP of Sales and Marketing for EMG, Brett Hall, , Informativ’s Curtis Knievel, VDX.tv’s VP of Account Planning, James Johnson, Keller Creative Agency’s Data Engineer Alec Sullivan, and WYN Solutions’ CEO, Venus Toro..
Mastermind Sessions
One of attendees’ favorite events at the 2024 Digital Dealer Conference & Expo are our Mastermind Sessions. These sessions, held on each day of #DDCE2024, are tailored to the interests of those in the auto industry, where you will be encouraged to share best practices and challenges you have experienced.
The Dealership Mastermind will feature Proctor Dealerships Don Monda, Senior Fixed Operations Director, and Will Benedicks, Variable Operations Director, on Oct. 8, 01:00 PM – 01:50 PM. In this dynamic mastermind, you’ll engage in a peer group exchange, sharing best practices, ideas, and success strategies to propel dealership success.
Dealer World’s Troy Spring and Horne Auto Group’s April Simmons will moderate and help brainstorm in the Sales & Variable Ops focused Mastermind Session, but attendees drive the conversation by sharing their own questions and challenges. It is set for Oct. 8, from 02:00 PM – 02:50 PM.
The AI Mastermind lead by Troy Spring and Jarrod Kilway, VP of Digital Operations, Casa Automotive Group is set for Oct. 9 from 02:20 PM – 3:10 PM. Spring and Kilway will moderate and help brainstorm in this AI focused Mastermind, but attendees drive the conversation by sharing their own questions and challenges.
The Marketing & Advertising Mastermind is set for Oct. 10, starting at 09:00 AM. Lisa Gener of Covert Auto Group and Dave Lemmon of DealerOMG will moderate and help problem solve, but the questions and challenges discussed will be the ones that the dealers choose and bring to the table. These sessions were extremely powerful last year, allowing discussions around everything digital marketing and advertising related and finding answers that were crowd sourced by the group based on experience and tried and true methodology.
What Else? Plenty More
Besides the new friends and sessions being offered, the Digital Dealer Conference & Expo will include:
- Enhanced networking: more meetups and fun ways to connect throughout the event
- A Speed Networking program, which offers dealerships and vendors a relaxed yet efficient way to explore a variety of innovative solutions
- An expo hall with 120+ cutting-edge auto retail solutions
- 75+ actionable sessions
- Masterminds and interactive workshops
- And more!
Digital Dealer offers full conference and expo badge options, as well as an expo hall-only option for Dealerships/OEMs. Digital Dealer Conference & Expo attendee badge types include:
- Dealership (exclusively for dealers and employees of a dealership)
- OEM (exclusively for vehicle manufacturers)
- Allied (anyone that supports, services, or sells solutions to dealerships falls under this category)
Click here to register now.