What To Expect from the NADA Show 2022
Jeremy Louisos of Preowned Auto Logistics speaks with Scott Dube, NADA Show 2022 committee chairman, about the NADA Show 2022 in Las Vegas, and what attendees and exhibitors can expect from the show.
Jeremy Louisos:
Hi, my name is Jeremy Louisos and I’m here today with Scott Dube, NADA Show 2022 committee chairman, and NADA director for Massachusetts. Our topic today is the NADA Show 2022, an event beginning March 10th in Las Vegas, Nevada, described as the automotive industry event of the year. Attendees can learn about the latest strategies and emerging trends. There are more than 100 workshops in education sessions for more than 550 companies at the expo. Welcome Scott.
Scott Dube:
Hey Jeremy, thanks so much for having me this afternoon.
Jeremy:
Thanks for joining us. I really appreciate the time. For those organizations like Preowned Auto Logistics who are sort of new to NADA — it’s their first time going to the event — what’s this event all about?
Scott:
Well, first I want to say, Jeremy, you guys could not have picked a better year to jump on board and start exhibiting at NADA Show. This year is going to be unbelievable. There’s so much pent up demand for this get together, and there’s so much excitement and buzz that I think that it is going to be absolutely fantastic. I predict you’re going to have the time of your life.
Jeremy:
We’re really looking forward to it. For those returning to the show though, what might be different this year than in previous years?
Scott:
Well, this year is going to be… I’d like to say it’s going to be all different. We’re doing a lot of things differently. We’re starting with the first night is different. We’re going to host a welcome kickoff, or welcome back kickoff event, at the all new Allegiant Stadium, home of professional football there in Las Vegas. We have the whole building and we have Train as our headline act. We have a video DJ from the Las Vegas area. We’re going to have on-field entertainment, excitement, activities, things to do. It’s just going to be unbelievable opportunities for networking. We have all the clubs in the building rented out, we have a bunch of different sponsors that are participating in that, it’s going to be really a networking event like most of us haven’t seen in a really long time.
Jeremy:
We’re really excited and more excited now after that preview. Thank you for that. For those who don’t know, what type of folks attend NADA?
Scott:
Well, it’s interesting Jeremy, it used to be, when I was a kid, and my father and mother were going, it was 18,000 dealer principles from across the country. It was mostly just dealer principles that went and over the years it’s become dealers and managers, and we’re seeing deeper and deeper in the organization. People are coming — so I would say from the dealerships, you’ve got that whole part of the world, and then you’ve got the exhibitor/vendor side of the world that’s very well represented. The OEMs have people there. I mean, anybody that has anything to do with our industry is typically there and from around the world, not just from around our country.
Jeremy:
You bring to mind…so there’s going to be an International presence there as well.
Scott:
Yeah, typically we have as many as 2000 people from around the world. This year our International attendance will be a little bit lighter just because of travel restrictions and all that kind of thing. But for the most part, it’s become…in fact, we have a hospitality suite that’s just for our international visitors. That’s pretty big onsite in the exhibit hall, so it’s a very well attended, from an international point of view, event.
Jeremy:
So with so much going on there, and this might be a little unique for you with your role in this event, but I have to ask, what are you most looking forward to personally?
Scott:
I tell you, I can’t…it’s so hard to pick which thing to be most excited about. I mean, Allegiant I’m really excited about, and you asked me earlier — I want to go back to it because I got so excited talking about Allegiant that I didn’t get on the rest of the things that are different — but we’ve got an EV pavilion that we’ve set up this year. We’ve got a large booth space that we’re dedicating to EV questions and answers.
We’re bringing in experts from charging companies, our own 20 group moderators, academy instructors and other industry experts to answer dealers’ questions about how this is going to impact them, and how to get involved, and how to do this right, and how to be profitable at it, and take care of the customer.
We’ve got, as I said, that event on the opening night, but we’ve also got a thing called Dealer Learning Lab, which will be different this year. We have TED-style talks that are different this year. There are just a whole bunch of different things that people can participate in that are just so much different than previous years and we’re really adapting as we get feedback from our dealers, and managers, and exhibitors. We’re trying to adapt the show to modernize it and make it more exciting for a wider audience and a bigger group of people.
Jeremy:
What were some considerations in that vein of trying to modernize the event? What were some of the big considerations going into that? What looks different? What are some of the new features that an event like this would need?
Scott:
Well, obviously the EVs are the thing this year, right? We’ve never really spent a lot of time just highlighting the vehicles that we sell because we’re all around these vehicles all the time. It didn’t seem really necessary. There’s a lot of people that criticize the franchise dealer network for their commitment to EV and what we’re working on is continuously making sure that we are showing the world that we’re fully committed. We’re all in on EVs and that our dealer network is the only way to promote the number of cars sales that they want to have occur so you can’t do it in a one off. You can’t do it at the way some of the smaller companies have done it. The dealer franchise network is the only way to get the kind of market penetration that the government and the OEMs are looking for.
We feel like those kinds of things are adaptations that if you look at our NADA Show event app, we continue to refine that and work on that. We listen to what people tell us about what our surveys say about the way we do our educational offerings. I mean, as you said at the beginning, over a hundred educational offerings, hundreds of hours of content.
Our general sessions, the speaker selection is just unbelievable this year. We have Dana Perino, of course, most people are familiar with her work. Michael Strahan — I mean, who doesn’t know who Michael Strahan is — and this retired army staff Sergeant Travis Mills who’s a recalibrated warrior. I get choked up just talking about Travis. If you go online and look at any of his content, the guy is just so incredibly inspirational that if you can’t take something away from any of these three people, I mean, you probably should check yourself into the Clark County Medical Center because there’s something really wrong with you.
I think we’ve got some distinguished speakers in our distinguished speaker series that are also just incredibly inspiring, experienced, and people that you can just say, wow, I can take so much away from that.
So all of those things are sort of responsive to what our survey of our attendees are telling us about what kind of content they want to see. When I say the changes that we’re making, they’re around that.
Jeremy:
That sounds awesome. Again, us being new to the event and for folks like us, what advice would you give to attendees looking to get the most out of this experience?
Scott:
I have two words for you, “plan ahead”.
Jeremy:
Okay.
Scott:
That applies to everybody that’s going, whether you’re going as a dealer, manager attendee, or you’re going as an exhibitor, or you’re going as an OEM partner, you have to plan your schedule ahead of time. There’s just so much to see, and so much to do, and on top of it so many distractions, that if you don’t make sure that you have a good solid game plan going in, you’ll be really overwhelmed and surprised at the end that you didn’t get nearly what you thought you’d get done, done.
As I said earlier, we have an app that people should download, plan their schedule, talk to the vendors and their exhibitors that they’re interested in ahead of time, but it goes two ways. The exhibitors can also reach out to attendees that way, which I encourage everybody to use that whether they’re a vendor or an attendee. They need to use that to try and set up their time ahead of time, know what you want to see when you get there.
If you’re a dealer or dealer manager, if you’re an exhibitor, know who you want to talk to, who are the top 20 that you want to make sure you connect with while you’re at the show and make that happen. Take no excuses from your people about why it didn’t get done. It has to get done.
Planning ahead is the key to a successful conference of this size. We spent a year planning this show. We started planning this show before the last one was over. I would just encourage everybody if it takes us a year plus to put it on, it takes you a couple of days to get ready for it, so just make sure you do your homework before you get out there and you’ll have an incredible show. You’ll go home with notebooks full, or notes on your iPhone, or your Android full of people that you need to follow up with. If you’re a vendor and if you’re a dealer attendee, then you will have learned things that you did not know before you got there I guarantee it.
Jeremy:
That’s sage advice, we’ll be sure to plan ahead for our trip. This has really been great. Thank you so much for bringing us through this Scott. People that are looking to connect with NADA, the NADA Show 2022, or you, how could they best connect with this event?
Scott:
show.nada.org is the number one place for all the information. Go look at the distinguished speaker series that we have, go look at the other speakers that we have, look at the educational content, download the app, do all those things. We’d love to hear from people, we’d love to hear what they’re thinking about the show. I’m very active on LinkedIn and always interested in hearing from people that have questions about the Show.
Jeremy:
Awesome. Well, once again, thank you, Scott. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Scott:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Jeremy. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Jeremy:
And you can capture the PAL team at the NADA Show 2022, booth 6812N, or at any time at preownedautologistics.com. Thank you for listening.
