Company: Soapy Joe's Car Wash San Diego, CA
Company Description: Soapy Joe’s Car Wash is a family owned and operated business in San Diego County. We’re dedicated to providing quality service, customer satisfaction and eco-friendly technology, all at a great value. With 20 locations offering convenient hours, lightning fast express service and premium upgrades, we make it easy for everyone to enjoy their ride. Voted “Best Car Wash in San Diego" in 2022.
Nomination Category: Individual Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Most Innovative Woman of the Year - Advertising, Marketing & Public Relations
 Nomination Title: Anne Mauler, VP Marketing
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the achievements since July 1, 2021 of the nominated woman, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions for this category, provide them in the spaces below:
We will be providing written answers for this portion.
- Briefly describe the nominated individual: history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 199 words used.
Pioneering marketing executive Anne Mauler is the Vice President of Marketing at Soapy Joe’s car wash, a rapidly expanding 20+ location family-owned business in San Diego. Under Anne’s visionary leadership, Soapy Joe’s has revolutionized the car wash industry with nationally recognized, award-winning brand activations that defy conventions and drive market share, helping to fuel explosive growth for the company, which has nearly doubled their locations from 11 to 20, and grown subscription memberships by 100% during her tenure.
Anne’s deep expertise in omnichannel marketing make her a triple threat to industry competitors: she is equally adept at building the martech stack, the programmatic marketing mix and the media infrastructure in order to quickly scale operations. Her skillful leverage of emerging tech has led the company to many industry-wide firsts, including the first entry by a car wash company into the NFT space.
Her success is fueled by a unique combination of brand-focused innovation and data-driven technical expertise which she developed at national brands like Qdoba and Panera Bread, devising highly creative, unique events that spark brand affinity and enthusiasm while utilizing the latest technologies to capture customer data that can then be leveraged to generate future engagement and growth.
- Outline the nominee's achievements since July 1 2021 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 248 words used.
Anne’s accomplishments since 2021 are many!
Her most recent success was the Passport to Fun, the country’s first car wash campaign to offer a non-fungible token (NFT) collection, winning the 2023 Stevie Award for Brand and Experiences, Gamified Experience Category.
Other successes under her leadership include:
· Achieved over 4BN online views of press hits since 2021
· Ramped membership sales at new sites to industry-accepted “maturity” in under 6 months.
· Increased average customer lifetime by 54%
· Improved customer service scores from 78 to 90% with a call volume of 6k+ per month and a ticket volume of 1500+ per month
· Maintains churn rates from subscription members less than half the rate of industry benchmarks
· Built Costco distribution be a top-10 non-food ticket nationwide, from 7 warehouses locally
Over the course of the 3-month promotion, the Passport to Fun campaign minted an unprecedented 17,704 NFT digital tokens and created custodial wallets for 3,771 members, while the story yielded 171 press release pick-ups across the country.
The Passport to Fun promotion was a driver of revenue as well as brand exposure and industry acclaim – the campaign generated over 22,000 new monthly and annual memberships for the company in less than three months.
Some of the many awards under her belt since 2021 include the Gold Stevie Award for PR Campaign of the Year in April of 2022 and an ADDY Award for the Propose at Soapy Joe's Campaign in March 2022.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 214 words used.
There are numerous supporting materials that support Anne’s accomplishments, including press releases, articles, keynote presentations, podcasts, and awards announcements of all kinds.
A number of these materials and resources detail the success of the Passport to Fun campaign and spotlight the originality and technical know-how that went into its creation.
This article from Yahoo in particular highlights the way that Anne has used creativity, technology, and a scrappy mindset to gain visibility via leveraging NFT’s in the same way that much larger brands such as Nike and Pepsi have found success.
The article also points out how she considered other critical KPI’s beyond simple revenue generation or SOV in creating and managing the campaign, including increasing multi-location visits from Soapy Joe’s customers and achieving record-breaking email open rates.
The interview from Medium underscores Anne’s impressive ability to both collect the most important customer data and to glean actionable insights from that data.
The panel discussion by CAR WASH Magazine Live highlights this data-first mindset as well.
Soapy Joe’s has won a record number of awards across a variety of categories during Anne’s tenure, and many of the supporting resources highlight some of these accolades while speaking to the breadth of areas under her direction that she has impacted, from customer service to strategic communications.
- Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the nominee's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 250 words used.
Anne’s successful leadership at Soapy Joe’s is significant because she is consistently able to score huge wins with limited resources and a small but dedicated team. Other successful marketing executives have had access to generous budgets and large creative teams, but Anne continually delivers significant results with much less. The scrappy nature of her highly successful campaigns made the extraordinary results even more impressive – the 2022 Magic Pet Parade campaign alone garnered 16,898,345 views across digital and TV!
Anne’s other differentiator is the ability to infuse both novelty and technological innovation into an industry that is notoriously traditional. The Passport to Fun promotion in particular injected a sophisticated breakthrough technology - the web3 metaverse – into a campaign, which was a first in the car wash space.
Many executives would have balked at introducing such a technologically advanced concept into a major, multi-channel initiative, but Anne believed in her customers and trusted her team to translate the complex idea into actionable, engaging messaging.
Anne not only inspires her team and her peers with her energy, enthusiasm and deep creativity, but she is also a recognized leader in the space. She is consistently asked to lead panel discussions and keynotes at every major industry tradeshow, has been invited to play a leadership role in an elite industry-wide marketing group of top operators, and is constantly sought after by industry operators (including market competitors!) for her vision and expertise in this space. Her mark on this industry is indelible.
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