Meet The Team...

The Head Angler
Steve Dawson: President

Steve Dawson isn’t the kind of guy that gets knowledge from a book and then claims to be an expert. He’s the kind of guy that learns from doing, and he’s done a lot. Best of all, Steve’s resume is rich with proof that when Steve Dawson sets his mind to something, he gets big results. And if you want someone working for you that understands the pressures of running a multifaceted organization, Steve’s the guy.

He began his career working with one of the largest automotive groups in the United States. As a Senior Service Advisor he oversaw the opening of a new Mitsubishi dealership. Within two short years, he took over as Service manager. The result? Steve increased business by 115% and moved the dealership’s customer satisfaction from 25th in the nation for small volume dealers to number one in the nation for large dealers. The dealership owner recognized Steve’s unusually strong drive and when Steve pitched an idea for an outbound marketing center with a foundation in direct mail, the owner gave him the reigns. This new branch of the business contacted current and past dealership customers for service follow-ups and solicited additional service work. Steve ran this call center as a separate company with its own profit and loss statement. In this position, he was instrumental in maintaining the profitability and customer satisfaction levels of each of the dealer group’s 15 service departments. Steve reviewed monthly and quarterly sales processes, productivity standards, and expense control to ensure strong productivity, created the curriculum for employee-training programs, and facilitated these programs teaching various skills ranging from customer service, selling techniques, listening skills, and computer skills.

Soon the owner of the dealer group came to Steve with yet another challenge. He needed someone to jump-start his fledgling Internet department. As the IT Director, Steve designed and installed a network infrastructure, created an ROI Performa, and an ongoing support and maintenance plan. Within 12 months, 35 locations were connected via various means of data communication. The project was completed under budget.

Now to the advertising. With the IT Department and Call Center off and running, Steve was hungry for a new challenge. As luck would have it, the dealer group needed some focus at its in-house advertising agency. Steve became the new Business Operations Director. His challenge was to create and implement a business plan that would bring the agency’s failing annual profits to $154,000. He nearly doubled that number in under a year. But profits weren’t all that went up. So did internal and external morale. Steve made the agency an agency. Rather than just dictating budgets and schedules to each dealership general manager, Steve began to focus on strategy. His scientific approach to advertising relied on the study of previous results and accurate advertising tracking methods. Rather than giving every brand under the owner’s umbrella the same strategy, Steve matched advertising methods to the individual demographics and psychographics at each dealership point. The result was an increase in traffic and a much stronger agency.

In 2004 Steve left the dealer group to start a company of his own. The result was OPSP, a consulting company that helps business owners run their companies more efficiently. As he met with clients in various fields, Steve noticed that many business owners weren’t taking their advertising and marketing plans seriously enough. He had been bitten by the advertising bug and saw an opportunity to bring his marketing knowledge to the aid of others. He rounded up some of the best advertising professionals he knew and they all decided it was time to Go Fish!

Choosing the Bait
Rebecca Class: Vice President,
Director of Account Services

It seems impossible. Rebecca is just 28 years old, but she says she’s been in automotive advertising for 28 years…is she full of it? Well, kind of.

In truth, Rebecca was born into the business. Her father, Geoffrey Class owns the New Holland Auto Group, a powerhouse dealer group located in Lancaster County. Sure, growing up she never really wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps…one of her favorite pastimes was singing competitor’s jingles to her father to get him fired up…but somewhere along the way she found herself reading Automotive News like it was Glamour magazine. Still, Rebecca buried these hidden interests in the business, even while working in her father’s service department during high school. She headed off to Ursinus College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with departmental honors in her majors of English Literature and Communications. She was going to write novels and live a very glamorous life.

Post college, Rebecca realized she couldn’t write a novel if she couldn’t pay the bills! She headed to QVC to work as a copywriter. Within three short months she was promoted to Senior Copywriter for the home shopping giant. Part of her responsibility was to write the sell copy for the Today’s Special Value, a product that accounted for 20% of QVC’s daily revenue. Within two years she was editing much of QVC’s web site content, writing the descriptions for the company’s entire NASCAR product line, and starting to feel a little bored. After speaking to her father and offering him some advertising advice, Rebecca came up with an idea. Why not work in automotive advertising? She could have some fun with dear old dad, but not have to work in his showroom. It seemed like the perfect fit.

With her mind made up, Rebecca interviewed with a small agency and became their Media Director. Her responsibilities included media planning, rate negotiating, purchasing and trafficking. The thrill of getting the best possible rates during the best possible dayparts became her drug of choice…that is until she got to go out on the road and began to speak with clients for the first time. From heating and cooling companies to car dealers and furniture stores, Rebecca loved the idea of creating the perfect strategy to drive traffic to a business’s front door. The problem? The agency she was with didn’t seem to have a strategy at all. That’s when she first spoke to Fred Beans, a partner of her father. Fred was headed out to Arizona to interview a new ad agency that would handle his television and radio media buying and production. He invited Rebecca to come along. Before the plane landed back in Philadelphia, Rebecca had a new job. As a liaison between the electronic ad agency and Beans’ in-house print agency, Rebecca planned the advertising strategy for each dealership, oversaw spot production, and took on much of the company’s corporate writing.

As time progressed, Rebecca became more and more critical of the creative production coming from the Arizona ad agency. The scripts were cookie-cutter versions of every car ad she’d ever heard, the production was poor, and the media buying was suffering from being purchased by an Arizona buyer with no knowledge of the local market. She let Beans and her father know it was time to head in another direction. Rebecca took over spot production and media buying for the group. Immediately the group’s public image improved and traffic started to spike. Rebecca knew she had found the business she belonged in, but she was ready to go out on her own and show her father exactly what she was made of. That’s when Steve Dawson called, and that’s when Rebecca decided to Go Fish!