Ep. 649 - The Ultimate Customer Magnet for Dealerships, with John Dwyer
In this episode, my guest is John Dwyer—a marketing enigma known for crafting “way-outside-the-box” customer attraction strategies.
John is the brains behind campaigns that have turned entire industries on their heads. He’s the guy who got Jerry Seinfeld out of retirement for an ad campaign (seriously, who does that?!), and he’s been helping businesses attract customers like a magnet without ever relying on discounting.
And in this episode? We’re pulling back the curtain on how he does it.
Why price discounting is a race to the bottom (and what to do instead)
The insane power of incentives (He literally helped a car dealership achieve its biggest sales month in history—without dropping a single price)
How to stand out in an industry where everyone is offering the same thing (No more “free oil changes” that no one cares about)
Why persistence beats intelligence—John shares the exact strategy that landed him the Seinfeld deal, and trust me, it’s a game-changer
If you’ve been wrestling with how to stand out in today’s crowded market, John’s unconventional wisdom is exactly what you need. Hit play now and get ready to think differently about marketing forever!
Episode Brought To You By FlexDealer
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Episode Transcript
MC: 0:00
(Episode Sponsor)This episode is brought to you by FlexDealer.
Hey auto industry. In this episode, my guest is a marketing enigma, a direct response customer attraction expert who thinks way outside the box. And I mean, of course you know we love that here on the Dealer Playbook. Of course I'm speaking about the one and only John Dwyer. John, thanks so much for joining me on the Dealer Playbook podcast.
John: 0:35
Thank you, michael, and you know I've always been trying to work out because that's my normal intro that everybody gives me what's an Enigma?
MC: 0:41
Well, you know. Know, when you say Enigma to me, I think about this band from the 90s called Enigma, I think they were. They had at least one hit. Well, I think of words like prodigy. I think of words like someone who's figured something out and can repeat it. That's often what comes to my mind. I'll go along along with that. That sounds good. Okay, I love it.
MC: 1:06
Well, I want to ask you a little bit about this, obviously through the lens of the retail auto industry. We are on a constant hunt for striking gold. What is that one campaign? The Super Bowl just happened, of course, here in America, and everyone's like I've got that one shot, one kill kind of message. As I look at your bio, I feel the need to call out some of these things that are just incredible to me. There can only be one person that brings Jerry Seinfeld out of retirement, and it's you, which I need to learn about that. And the foundation of your institute of wow. Really, maybe we'll start there. When did you realize that you were onto something? What did that look like?
John: 1:48
Well, yeah, I got into this in the 1800s and so therefore, I've been doing this for a little while. I used to be on podcasts with wagon wheels back in those days. Yeah, look, I was okay at art. At school, art and English were my subjects, and maths and science, of course, you know, no chance at all was I going to pass those subjects. And so therefore, you know, I sort of could see in my late teens, early 20s, that I should get into the advertising or marketing or entertainment game. And so I did. Yeah, I did all the courses at college, but of course that's a waste of time. The teachers at college have never had a job, so therefore that was a complete waste of time.
John: 2:21
I came out with a certificate and I was lucky enough to get a job here in Australia, down under, with a big supermarket chain called Woolworths, and Woolworths were big on what we call incentive-based marketing. And back in the day then what we would do is we'd say, look, if you shop at the supermarket at Woolworths, for every $10 you spend you get a stamp, and when you save up those stamps, you can get cookware or glassware for ridiculous prices. And when I could see the impact that had on revenue. I thought, my goodness, this is crazy. Why don't I leave and set up my own business and do all this sort of stuff? So that's how it happened. I used a major retailer here to teach me how to basically create incentive-based marketing, and then I basically went out and exploited it myself.
MC: 3:01
Isn't that interesting. I remember Woolworths. I want to say Woolworth's was also in Canada.
John: 3:06
It was, yeah, I think without the S. I think in America and Canada it was Woolworth and I'm not sure that it was the supermarket chain. It was something else, I think. But yeah, here in Australia it's a big supermarket chain.
MC: 3:15
Okay, very well, and I love that you say incentive-based marketing. I think now we just call it gamification, don't we? We? We learn how to, we figure out how to gamify you know people so that they want to come back, especially ice cream shops with they're gonna every 10 cones you get a. You know a free cone, or something like that thank the millennials, for you know phrases like that.
John: 3:35
Gamification, like, just like I keep on saying my six millennials, I've got six children. So therefore I said it's an incentive. All right, you call it gamification, it's a bloody incentive.
MC: 3:45
Oh, isn't that funny. I have a 15-year-old who's teaching me all sorts of new lingo and wording today that I just I think, man, when I was his age, the niftiest word I could come up with was awesome. And now they abbreviate everything. You can't even say abbreviate, john, you have to say abbreve. They abbrev everything, and my cousin isn't cousin anymore, it's so he'll say what up? And I'll say you call me sir, lol. There's the other one that I always think is so much hate. It's SMH, but it's actually shaking my head. Anyways, we're going off the rails. What was the biggest realization? So you're working for a chain. I find this really interesting. So you're working for Woolworths. You tap into oh, they do a lot of incentive-based marketing. Now I'm going to go start my own company. What was the biggest realization you made in breaking away from an organization that had a structure and going and doing it for yourself?
John: 4:51
The realization was that I was an idiot because I had no money. Yeah, so it was door knocking then, and back in the day before digital, of course, you know. So therefore, you would send off a fax to whoever it might be, saying, look, I've got the skills to show you how to stop price discounting. And what I would do is, you know, I'd just demonstrate to them. I had a guy with me that was an artist, and so therefore, even before you know, these days, with AI doing most of your artwork, we would mock up a promotional scratch game or something of that nature, and I would actually then pitch it to whoever it might be. And yeah, scratch game or something of that nature, and I would actually then pitch it to whoever it might be. And, yeah, we put food on the table for a little while.
John: 5:29
I hit the big jackpot when I ended up getting Rupert Murdoch's newspapers to do all the scratch bingo. So I did all the big scratch bingo games for Rupert Murdoch's newspapers, and how that works is that, you know, we letterbox dropped Sydney, let's say, with a scratch card, and you had to buy the paper to find out the numbers every day that you would scratch off. And we would make sure, because of the way that we set up the cards, that you had three of the four symbols to win $100,000 by Wednesday. So you had to buy Thursday, friday, saturday, sunday's paper.
MC: 5:55
This obviously evolves to the point where you are able to get Seinfeld's number. Bring me into that. I mean mean, how do you get to the point where you're the guy convincing someone like seinfeld to come out of retirement to do a campaign for you?
John: 6:11
and and, michael, I'll tell you how I did it and I have milked the shit out of that for the last 10 years, as you would, yes, you would, yeah, look, a client of mine and we're doing this for car dealerships down under, so it might be interesting to you a client of mine mine about early 2000s was the Greater Building Society and sorry, 2010, 2011. And this building society was up against the big banks in Australia, like the Wells Fargo, and it was a challenge of brand, because a building society versus the big Wells Fargo banks, it would be like a corner store against Costco. Okay, so therefore, I kept on saying to them they brought me on to do marketing consultancy and I said, look, you guys are on drugs, you are marketing home loans on a percentage rate. So, you know, get a home loan from the Greater Building Society for 5.8%. Well, the Big Wheels Fargo Bank would beat that within like five minutes and make it 5.6%, whatever it was a percent lower. And so they said, okay, smart alec, you've been here for you know, a couple of months, you've done your time and motion study. What do you suggest we do?
John: 7:08
And at the time, I was doing some infomercials on television for a travel discount company where they would give you a five thousand dollar vacation for two and a half right. And I introduced them and said look, why don't you do this? Stop the honeymoon rate, which every bank still till today. It does that where they look get a home loan from us and we'll give you a honeymoon rate, a break of 1%, for a year, and then it jacks back up again. There's nothing unique about that. Every bank does it. So why do it? And I said look, why don't you pick that up and give it to the travel company and they'll give you a discount vacation? And that's what we did. We jumped on TV and social media and we just said get a home loan, get a free vacation. They took an extra $10 billion in home loans in the first few years. This idiot, this complete moron who you're talking to, charged a consultancy fee.
John: 7:53
So, anyway, I realised that I'm not very I can't spell IQ, and so I could see all these home loans going out, this bank making a fortune and about three or four years into this promotion get a home loan, get a free vacation we took it up a notch. We decided, well, I put it to the bank that we would get a celebrity of some sort to take it to another level. And so we did a research here in Australia. Who do you think would be a good person to actually be a spokesman for the bank, given that it's got a cheeky personality, because we came on television We'd say why would you get your home loan from the bank? They know you as a number, you know. Come across to the greater buildings. And then we'd show people on the beaches, of course, and you know they're happy compared to you know, being unhappy at a bank. And so this survey went out and, of course, just my luck. I'm thinking we'd be asked for Australian personalities and number one came up. You know, jerry Seinfeld would be a good spokesman for a.
John: 8:37
I'm an idiot. I've now completely dug my own grave. I mean, how the hell am I going to pull this up? So that's what I did. I just annoyed his management for about six months and eventually he said yes. And when I met him for the first time in New York, I said why did you do this? Because you've got more money than God. And he said to me well, two reasons. I love the Aussie sense of humor. And you just asked me to basically take the piss out of banks, and so that sounds like it'd be good fun. And he said the second thing is I thought if I didn't say yes, you'd never go away. I said to him persistence beats intelligence. Thankfully, in my instance, persistence beats intelligence.
MC: 9:13
Oh, that I love that. I mean and there's a second lesson here, especially for those that tune into the podcast, which is the dollars are in the follow-up just relentlessly. I don't think there's anybody in the auto industry that should or be offended by someone who persistently follows up like that until they get an answer, and that's something we struggle with. I want to talk to you about this because you made a couple of points and I wrote a note here. So you go to the bank and you say, hey, you should do this because it's going to work like this bank. And you say, hey, you should do this because it's going to work like this.
MC: 9:50
Where does the? I think marketers in general struggle with this, and I'm interested in your take to know that what you're suggesting will work and or to be able to put your name on the line, your reputation on the line, with that level of confidence that it'll work, because I think so many people this day and age just lack the confidence to stand behind an idea. What do you do? What's your mechanism? To say I know what I'm going to pitch is going to work.
John: 10:15
Yeah, I think, really, it comes down and this is very convenient for a baby boomer me to say this, but it comes down to, you know, my view is that you can always have a pretty good chance of predicting someone's assistance to you if you look at their past, if you look at their history. I mean, you know, if you get Tom Hanks to do a movie or, you know, maybe Tom Cruise, there's a pretty good chance that movie's going to be a success. And so you know what I've done, particularly in the last 20 years. And you know, keep in mind, I'm a baby boomer. So therefore you're challenging a lot of these digital marketing agencies that come along with the. You know, I call them the bearded hipsters with the ponytails, and you know I'm not saying that all of them, you know, talk themselves up too much, but a lot of them, you know, will sort of give themselves a bit of a rap and just say, well, let me have a look at your history, let's see what you've done. And, yeah, the way I look at it is that if, when people come to me, they say look, you know, I want you to help me get a lot more customers, in other words, I need a heart transplant. And I say to them well, if you're going to have a heart transplant for yourself, would you like the medical student who's just come out of school, he's 25 and he says, listen, I've never done this before, but I'm going to give it a hell of a shot or would you like the old fart that started for 30, 40 years to say, look, I've done this in my sleep. And of course, the answer is the offer. So whenever I go into places, I absolutely say to them look, I mean, car dealerships are an easy one for me. We have a car dealership that just recently duplicated the bank promotion. So therefore and I know that the best person you can have in a car dealership is someone who takes a test drive, because if you get 10 test drives, then there's a chance you're going to convert two or three of them. So we just give away a vacation for every test drive, not for the car.
John: 11:50
So when this particular company came to us here in Australia, they said oh, listen, you've got a vacation promotion, and we do. We have a promotion where you can offer you know someone to come and test drive your car and they'll get three nights in Vegas or Orlando or New York, or this is a worldwide travel company that we've partnered up with and they said oh, what we'll do is we'll, and we give them the vacations, by the way, worth $1,000 for three to seven nights. We give that to them for about $30 something. Okay, and the reason that we can do that is because the hotels are part of this program. They're very happy to give up unsold rooms outside of school vacation periods because they hope that people who stay at that hotel in Vegas or Orlando or San Diego or wherever it might be, buy food. Yeah, yeah, so it's food and beverage.
John: 12:33
And so, therefore, this guy just smashed records out of the park because at first he said to me oh, we'll give away the vacation vouchers we talked about this, by the way so we'll give away these vacation vouchers when they buy a car. I said, no, you're on drugs. Okay, nobody's going to buy a $50,000 or $60,000 or $80,000 car because they get a three-night vacation in Orlando or New York, but what they will do is take a test drive. And so I said what you've got to do is you've got to treat this as a Happy Meal toy and understand. And I always tell everyone look, I've got six kids. They're all growing up now with their own little kids. But you know we spent a fortune at McDonald's on Happy Meal. They never, ever ate the hamburger. It was all about the toy. So if you give them a Happy Meal toy to take a test drive and you get that Happy Meal toy worth $1,000, but you're getting it.
MC: 13:29
Hold on, I'm catching up. I love the analogy of McDonald's. I don't care what anybody says 99 billion hamburgers sold. We've all eaten at McDonald's, whether we want to admit it or not. But the idea of this I don't know what you want to call it this trip wire, this lead magnet, if you will, that sucks them in. Whether we want to admit it or not, we still bought the meal to get the toy. You got it. You got me thinking now about this. I don't even know what you would call this, but it's like almost. It is a lead generator for everyone involved. It's a lead generator for the, the dealership, but it's also a lead generator for the travel company and it's a lead generator for the hotel.
MC: 14:19
Like oftentimes, john, I feel like we do this and we say well, how can I generate leads for myself? You've actually deployed a program that generates leads for three, maybe four different businesses all in one go.
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John: 15:03
Yeah, well, look, and this sounds very corny and I do seminars, so therefore I'm on stage being corny for quite some time. But yeah, this is corny, but it's a win. It's a win for the car dealership because they're going to get more. They're going to get more test drives than ever, and if they get a shit audience, it's their fault, okay. So what happens is that you advertise on television and, and you know, social media, come and get a test drive from us for a limited time, and of course that's bullshit, because if it works, you just stretch it. Okay, and for a limited time.
John: 15:36
When you get a test drive from us, you are going to get a free vacation and you will have like a beetle mania response to that. It's just like shut the. Now what happens is that when they click the social media ad and go through to the landing page, on that landing page, of course you get everything but their blood group and you've got to make sure they've got a driver's license, of course. But you also ask them at that time you know how old is their current car? Have they been thinking of all the usual pre-qualifications? So therefore, if you let someone take a test drive and they've not satisfied you on that pre-qualification landing page, then you are silly. So therefore, the thing that you are letting people take a test drive based on you pre-qualifying on that landing page, you will get the odd tire kicker who will slip through. But that's collateral damage with any promotion.
MC: 16:21
Yeah, that makes sense. I love that you said everything but their blood type. What interests me about this is you've pulled on multiple psychological triggers, including the right up to the last point where you're asking for so much information. That becomes, if I'm understanding this correctly, that becomes the mechanism that weeds out people that aren't actually interested or in a position where a new car is a feasible option for them.
John: 16:47
Yeah, exactly. I mean, at the end of the day, we all want warm leads, we don't want cold leads. And the trouble with Zuckerberg and his friends is that you know, depending upon what week it is, he can give you a shitload of cold leads. And you don't want cold leads, you want warm leads. And so, yeah, the idea is that you have an Elvis found headline which is take a test drive, get a free vacation, which is just like knockout. You'll never see a bigger headline than that.
John: 17:10
I mean, in the Building Society's instance, how it came about when I had Seinfeld come on TV in Australia and say get a home, get a free vacation. Pretty hard to keep that a secret. So this travel company contacted me just before COVID and they said look, we've got access to unsolved rooms all around the world, including Australia, and so, therefore, you look like you've got half a clue when it comes to marketing. How about we join forces? And therefore you actually, you know, package this up as a happy meal toy my words, not theirs and give this to businesses to help them take everyone's eyes off the price. And then you know, you pay us a royalty fee. And I said hallelujah, because I knew how hot vacations were, having come off the Seinfeld thing, and so, therefore, what we've done is that we've packaged this promotion together with, you know, vouchers that look like this, and we basically say to people look, if you've got a lawn mowing business, tell them to actually, you know, get their lawn mowed three times and give them a vacation If you've got, you know, if you're selling a refrigerator, buy my refrigerator, you get a free vacation.
John: 18:00
And the way that we educated everyone, including car dealerships, is just think Happy Meal toys and think that they've taken your eyes off the price because of pester power. Your kids are going. Mummy, mummy, daddy, I want the toy in the box. And you know what's the crazy part about this, michael? 97% of businesses worldwide have never used an incentive because it's too easy to drop their pants, but they've bought Kellogg's Corn Flakes for 50 years because the toy's in the box. They've joined the Prime Membership Club in Amazon because they get free shipping and free movies and, of course, they bought the unhappy meal, but they've never implemented into their own business, which is nuts. That means that they're marketing their business on price, which every single car dealership does.
MC: 18:39
Wow. Not only that, the best incentive that the industry often comes up with is get a free oil change. I can see from your instant reaction that's not a good one.
John: 18:50
Yeah, and look, the win thing. I mean you know we've done. You know, win a million dollars if you come into the car dealership. We do a lot of the insured price promotions with Lloyds of London. So therefore we package a lot of that stuff up. You know I can get a million dollars from insurance company for about $20,000 to $23,000. And you can say, come in and have a test drive and you're in the draw to win a million dollars. So you know we do all of that. We've filled resorts in Fiji and Hawaii by.
John: 19:13
You know, basically saying to travel agents listen, you book people into our resort and you're in the draw to win a million dollars. Well, when you go to a travel agent and say, look, I'm going to Fiji, what resort should I go to? Where do you think the travel agency is going to put you yeah, that's right. So these are all artificial stimuluses of hot leads. And the point is that when I've seen a lot of the contests with car dealerships and they say come in and do this and you might win, there's nothing that beats. You buy, you get. If McDonald's said in every 10 Happy Meals you buy, one of them will have a toy, I do not think that would get your attention. You get a toy every time you buy a Happy Meal.
John: 19:57
So what we say to people, listen, if you've got a conversion rate in the car dealership I mean, I looked up the statistics before we got on this and just on Google, it tells me that you know, the average conversion rate is two, three, sometimes four out of 10 test drives that you convert that to a customer. Well, if you're getting a vacation voucher that gives people three to seven nights, you know vacation accommodation. It doesn't include travel, of course, but it's accommodation and that's worth up to a thousand dollars and you are going to get that for $32. I think we sell them for then. Yeah, 10 of those is $320. That you've just handed out to get 10 test drives and you sell two or three motor cars. I think you're ahead.
MC: 20:27
I think you're ahead wow, fitting that's the word that comes out of my mouth. I mean, you're the founder of the institute of wow, um, and that's the word that's coming out of my I. I don't have a better word um other than wow. Uh, the common sense in me says this works. It just makes so much sense to me. I can only imagine dealers who are sitting here saying how do I differentiate? And they're all offering forever warranty, and they're all offering free powertrain warranties for life. And they're all doing that. They're all saying the same things. This is a very real, practical example of a program that could be put together to drive them more business for cheap, and I was going to ask you about that. So it's really the cost to the dealers, you know. You know, like you said, it's 30 bucks per test drive. Who's really footing the bill for this? Or?
John: 21:24
is it the vacation cab, the travel companies that contacted me pre-covid I mean, by the way, you know, michael, when this happened. They contacted me about six months before covid. None of us knew covid would come along and I thought this is unbelievable. I knew what I could do with it and so, therefore, I remember, advertised this, uh, to businesses, particularly on social media, and the money just came pouring in. And I said to my wife wife, you know Fiji. And she said, oh, you've been working hard, that'd be nice for a vacation. I said, vacation, forget the vacation, buy the island, okay.
John: 21:52
And God was watching and thrust COVID upon the world to get my head to shrink because I got too confident. And so here we are. We had the retirement package from heaven, which was a travel-related product. The first time in 100 years, no one could travel. So, yeah, I thanked God for that. That was great. And so for two years we sat on our hands, of course, pretty much. But yeah, of course, you know, after COVID, then this thing's the hottest Happy Meal toy in town. And as far as does it work? The car dealership that we just did this for in Australia a few months back. It was the biggest period, biggest period. I think they ran it for two months, the biggest two-month period in the history of the car dealership company.
MC: 22:29
It was unbelievable. Wow yeah, I'm blown away. I'm blown away. I love this kind of information For those listening or watching. I mean you know, I mean we talked about history, we talked about wisdom and experience. You called yourself a boomer, not me, just for the record. You know this stuff works. How can those listening and watching connect with you or reach out to you to learn more?
John: 22:51
Let me just play. Show this up to the screen. I think I can show that. I'll just put it on my phone because I know we can't do screenshots here. But that's, we call it holiday in Australia, okay. So therefore, what's vacation in America? So you'll see there.
John: 23:01
That was the banner on top of their website basically says come in and have a test drive and you get a free vacation. Anyone who does anything like this. What I suggest they do is that they would always show beach locations. Okay, we've tested everything you imagine. We did this for 10 years at the Greater Building Society and Seifert was involved in the latter part of that. But our research showed us, if you show them snow and red wine and log fires, that's good. Research showed us, if you show them snow and red wine and log fires, that's good. But if you show them beaches and people playing and on the beach in summertime, you will get another 50 better response.
John: 23:34
So if you ever give away a vacation as an incentive, then make sure you show. You show summer, not winter, and look, you can have a look at it. It's vacationsincentivecom. So if you go to our american site, it's because we've got the license to do this around the world. So therefore, vacations plural, so that's vacationsincentivecom. But when you go there you'll see that the minimum order is 50 vacations at $97. But if I'm on a podcast like this, knowing full well that there's a niche audience watching it, then we give a three for one deal. So, therefore, what happens is that if you multiply 50 vacation vouchers by $97, then of course it comes in at $4,850. And what we do is we give you a three for one deal if you mention that you've come from this podcast, which means you get 150 vouchers for the price of 50. And so therefore, that means that the vouchers are costing you $32 each.
MC: 24:26
Guys, you better light John up. That is an incredible deal. John can't thank you enough, sir. Thank you so much for joining me on the Dealer Playbook Podcast.
John: 24:37
My pleasure, All the best Michael.
MC: 24:38
(Outro) 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 DPB community on social media. Check back next week for a new Dealer Playbook episode. Thanks so much for joining.
