2025-3-26-Education/Marketing Meeting notes

   CIECA 500 Westover Dr  #11617; Sanford,  NC  27330 

Date

Mar 26, 2025

Chair: Don Porter

Agenda

Antitrust Statement

• This meeting is subject to the terms of our antitrust statement shown above. In addition, this meeting will be recorded. 

• Review and approval of minutes

• CIECA Webinars 2025

• CONNEX 2025

  • Speakers, Sponsors

• CONNEX Marketing

• The antitrust was read and the minutes were approved.

• CIECA Webinars 2025:

  • March 27: Harold Sears, Auto Additive, & Gerald Poirer, Vector Squared, 3D printing in collision repair. About 150 registered.

  • April 24: 2025R1, Paulette Reed and Architecture Committee will hold Technical Webinar.

  • May & June: AI in the customer experience. Since speakers weren’t all available on one day, we are holding Part 1 with Rav Mendiratta & Abhijeet Gulati focused on technical aspects of AI & Part 2 with Bill Brower and Mark Fincher focused on AI developments taking place.

  • April or CONNEX?: Tiffiany Moehring & Dan Lieber, American Battery Technology Company, EV battery technology/safety. The speakers were originally scheduled to speak during a webinar but have been asked about sharing information during CONNEX.

• CIECA CONNEX:

  • Confirmed Presenters:

    • (Insights) Sean Carey, SCG Management Consultants: State of the Industry

    • (Insights) Chetan Ghai, Chief Commercial Officer at Agero: Accident technology, introduced by Mark Helvenston

    • Refinish company representatives from AkzoNobel, BASF & PPG (Axalta not sure if the company is available to participate. Roy will reach out to Axalta contact and if he/she isn’t available to present, he will reach out to Sherwin-Williams. : Paint panel re: changes taking place with paint technology for new vehicles. W

    • (Insights) Jim Vecchio, head of VIN products, J.D. Powers: build data, partial/total loss, working with OEMs and insurers.

    • (Insights) Kyle Krumlauf, director of industry analytics: CCC Intelligent Solutions, will discuss industry insights. Closer to the conference, we will meet with him to discuss current trends he can share.

  • In Talks With:

    • MSO CIO Panel with Caliber, Gerber, Crash Champions CIOs. Paul and Ashley recommended.

    • Bill Brower, Solera: Touchless Claims overview and potential panel discussion. Ken suggested Mark Hogue and Tim Wheeler from Root to possibly take part in the panel. He said they have insight into the insurance/technology side of the business.

    • Distracted Driving rep and rep from Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT): CMT is interested in teaming up with Jennifer from Distracted Driving to present.

    • LexisNexis: Bill connected us with Frank Cesario about possibly presenting.

    • Verisk: Odum Wu.

  • Upcoming calls:

    • Duck Creek: We reached out last year to Duck Creek and the representatives were unavailable. We have a call to talk to a new contact there.

    • Tara Andringa, Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE)

  • Others:

    • Transportation Research Center

    • IIHS

    • American Battery Technology Company

    • Mike Anderson

    • Honda-solid-state batteries

    • Customer Experience Study - Rav Mendiratta

    • Sony Honda Mobility

    • OEMs:

      • Lexus checking for contact

      • Mercedes-Benz checking

      • Last year: Audi, Lucid Motors, Rivian, and Subaru participated. Devin Wilcox from Subaru recently joined Lucid and maybe he would be interested in offering a perspective.

      • Also reached out to: BMW, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Karma, Kia, Nissan, Stellantis, Tesla, Vinfast and Volkswagen.

    • Touchless Claims: Ken sent an email introduction to contacts at Root and Stacey will follow up.

    • OEM insurance: Ken said he would reach out to Josh Thompson again from GM Financial. Roy suggested reaching out to John Eck.

    • Panel or presentations with companies focused on technology, eg Revv ADAS. We had Michael Giarrizzo last year share information.

• Sponsors confirmed: We’ve sold out of Platinum and Gold sponsorships.

  • Platinum: IAA (Wednesday reception) and OEC (Wednesday lunch)

  • Gold: Caliber (Thursday lunch), Car-Part.com (Wednesday breakfast), CCC (Tuesday reception) and URG (Thursday lunch)

  • Silver: Enterprise, Safelite and Revv ADAS

  • Revv was interested in a booth and we are going to charge $500 for silver sponsors who would like to add on a booth.

  • Rav mentioned the booths last year were essentially tables with goodies and takeaways. He asked if we wanted to position it differently this year and have dedicated time for attendees to visit the booths and talk to a rep. Stacey and Paul explained that the booths weren’t set up to be like a normal tradeshow and that each sponsor has chosen to use the booth differently. It is an educational conference and the booths were added to provide sponsors the opportunity to put out promotional materials if they would like. Don asked why we wouldn’t allow more sponsors to be platinum and gold. Paul said it has been an evolving process and we will consider it next year. He said we are definitely open to changing and enhancing the sponsorship model. Mark said it’s a good program and doesn’t recommend recategorizing the sponsorship levels but look at raising the prices. Mark said it isn’t a priority for IAA to man its booth but other suppliers might find it useful. Ken agreed and said it’s not a priority for OEC to utilize the booth. He said CIECA does a great job of recognizing the sponsors. Mark said it’s a really good conference and we’re on the upswing. He said there are a million conferences and CONNEX is formidable to say the least and is nothing but improved. Roy agreed with Don about opening up the gold and platinum levels of sponsorship for more companies to sponsor next year. Paul said the conference is non-promotional and the real value is that we don’t represent a single view but the industry overall.

• CONNEX Marketing:

  • Video: Paul put together a promotional video we can use to promote the conference.

  • Paul created graphics for all of the speakers, sponsors and board members. He also created a generic graphic.

  • Bill Brower had put together a letter inviting colleagues to the conference, which has been shared with board members.

  • The communications plan was shared with the group. Rav suggested using AhaSlides to engage with the audience. Don suggested we use the names of the people providing testimonials rather than only the testimonial. He asked if NABC was going to be marketing the CIECA conference in a joint press release. NABC and the TN Collision Repair Conference has been mentioned in CIECA press releases. Don was going to reach out to Debbie. Don suggested sending out a Save the Date letter early on. Rav asked about recording the sessions. We’ve discussed recording the sessions in the past and there was concern about lower attendance if people could watch the presentation virtually. He suggested using AI tools to create video clips to peak people’s curiosity.

• Other:

  • Stacey Simmons offered to help with the tour the first day of the conference.

Great meeting everyone. Thank you for your participation. Have a great week!

Up Next

Action items

Decisions

Participants

• @Stacey Phillips - Facilitator

• @Paul Barry

• @Paulette Reed

• Don Porter

• Ken Eagleson

• Stacey Simmons

• Roy Schnepper

• Dave Braun

• Mark Helvenston

• Greg Best

• Rav Mendiratta

• Participants in the meetings are noted for your information.  If you have questions on the committee’s activities, please contact a recent attendee. Education Committee