National Press Release

SALT LAKE CITY, and ORANGE COUNTY, Calif., July 9 /PRNewswire/ -- DrivingSales.com (www.drivingsales.com), the auto industry's leading social media platform and largest online community, today announced that the premiere DrivingSales Executive Summit, presented by Vogelheim Ventures, will take place October 13th and 14th 2009 in Las Vegas. Designed as a uniquely collaborative and interactive forum, the DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) will bring together the nation's most innovative dealer operators to collaborate on progressive marketing models, interactive technologies and operational solutions and feature speakers and experts from both inside and outside the automotive sector who have fresh ideas to help drive a better future for the industry.

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"As our industry confronts perhaps its greatest changes and challenges, technology and media are rapidly evolving to provide some of the industry's greatest marketing and operational opportunities," says Charlie Vogelheim of Vogelheim Ventures. "We firmly believe that innovation and collaboration are the tools that will enable our industry to thrive beyond its current crisis, and we intend for the DrivingSales Executive Summit to serve as a critical starting point for ideas that will advance tomorrow's technologies and innovative practices into today's dealerships."

According to Vogelheim, the summit is designed to break away from traditional automotive conference formats by emulating the productive collaboration, diverse knowledgebase and immediacy of a social networking site. The keywords guiding the DSES format are 'participation', 'education' and 'collaboration,' and, in addition to world-renowned speakers and experts, it is set to include a rotating series of interactive roundtable forums, best practices workshops, technology showcases, live blogging, video feeds and the presentation of data from a new automotive retailer marketing white paper, set to be released exclusively at the DSES.

Said DrivingSales Founder Jared Hamilton: "The DrivingSales Executive Summit will take both a global and a domestic view of our industry as we separate hype from reality to learn from those in the trenches which technologies and marketing strategies are currently working, which ones are destined to bring future results -- and which ones have no impact on the bottom line."

Unlike other automotive industry events, DSES has a vendor-neutral policy, meaning adherence to a strict dealer-to-vendor ratio and no vendor influence on presentation selection. Topics currently on the summit agenda are Social Media: Does it Work?; Internet Reset: Where's it Headed; Media Spend: Appropriate Allocation; Effective Monitor and Measurement; Blogs Get Real; Searching for Successful Search Marketing; Life After Bankruptcy: The Next Incarnation; The Global Future: Europe, China and India; Reputation Management and Throw Out Your Internet Department!

The DrivingSales Executive Summit is an Invitation-Only event and will be held at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas on October 13th and October 14th 2009. For more information about attending the conference, sponsorship opportunities and to apply for an invitation, visit www.drivingsales.com/events or contact dses@drivingsales.com. Follow conference news as it develops on www.twitter.com/drivingsales.

About DrivingSales

DrivingSales.com (www.drivingsales.com) is the largest and premiere online community for the auto industry, where its thousands of members, including dealers, dealership managers, manufacturers, industry experts and vendors, collaborate and share best practices in a 20-group style setting. At DrivingSales, members create profiles and communicate with each other; build their networks and knowledgebase; share and rate proven strategies; and have access to relevant content contributed by fellow industry experts, including blogs, videos, interviews, and more. Dealer members rate and review vendor products - sharing their experiences with the DrivingSales community - while vendors have the opportunity to provide feedback on reviews and showcase their products and services. Created and built from the ground up by third-generation dealer Jared Hamilton, DrivingSales is the auto industry's leading social media custom platform.

About Vogelheim Ventures

Vogelheim Ventures is an automotive industry consulting firm that facilitates educational programs, collaborative development and innovative symposiums. Principal Charlie Vogelheim has been involved in the Automotive Industry for nearly twenty five years. His insight and counsel have been utilized by a variety of automotive related companies including, Kelley Blue Book, J.D. Power and Associates, The National Auto Auction Association, Car and Driver, Wards Automotive, Bobit Publishing, Meguiar's and several emergent companies. During his 20 year tenure at Kelley Blue Book, Charlie was instrumental in developing the website kbb.com. Serving as chairman of the Automotive Internet Standards Committee he was an original contributor to the development and implementation of the automotive sites at Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Vehix, e-Bay and several others. Vogelheim created the J.D. Power and Associates Internet Roundtable, and built it into the premier forum for automotive industry leaders and executives to share and discuss the development of the internet and its influence on the automotive industry.

    Media Contact:
    Melanie Webber (Melanie@mwebbcom.com), mWEBB Communications 949.307.1723

SOURCE DrivingSales.com