David Oates: How To Repair Your Dealership's Reputation

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David Oates is a crisis PR expert with 25 years of experience in the field. He helps organizations repair their brand's reputation in the press and online. With the emergence of web3.0 and a rapidly evolving digital landscape, there are sure to be brand pivots and crises and with David's proven approach, he is on a mission to help businesses handle any PR situation.

Key Notes About Repairing Your Dealership's Reputation:

01:32 - David shares his background and how his career in the Navy positioned him to work in public relations. In particular, after nine years in the Navy, he was promoted to a public affairs officer and found himself dealing with many different types of PR cases that required heavy repair.

02:42 - After the military, Dave worked for different tech companies and agencies and found that, given his background, he would deal with mass layoffs, product recalls, shareholder disputes, and CEOs behaving poorly. He says, "Not to boast, but I don't get nervous too much about any crisis matter for any industry of any size."

03:18 - Over the years, David chose to focus primarily on crisis PR — an opportunity accelerated given the fact that we each carry a small supercomputer in our pockets. At any moment in time, we have microphones, cameras, and an unlimited distribution network at our fingertips.

10:11 - David shares a baseball analogy and relates it to personal and corporate growth. There is a high degree of probability that you will fail, and that's okay. "Everybody is so concerned about the box score at the end of the day, but what they don't watch in the box score is the win/loss, who had the most runs, and who didn't. The only thing that matters is 100 percent. What matters is how many at-bats you took and how many times you swung at the pitch."

11:53 - When it comes to crisis management we need people to understand that failure is okay. We need to demystify it so that when it happens we are able to keep moving forward.

18:15 - David shares why he thinks the fight or flight mentality causes our natural inclination to either fight or say nothing. This can be harmful when dealing with negative reviews or naysayers because it leads to being hell-bent on creating drama.

19:00 - How to respond to negative reviews or comments about your dealership online.

Listen to the full episode for even more insights and context about how to repair your dealership's reputation.

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Thanks, David Oates

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