Every two years, the Auto Care Association hosts its Fall Leadership Days in conjunction with its legislative summit in Washington, DC.
During those three days, the ACA connects with all its volunteer leaders and members of the Association on its various committees and communities. ACA then spends one day on Capitol Hill educating Congress about the aftermarket and issues that are of importance to it.
This year, the meeting was helopd on Thursday, Sept. 19, and ACA had 300 people go to Capitol Hill, which resulted in 223 separate meetings with House and Senate elected officials.
Aftermarket Business World sat down with Lisa Foshee — senior vice president of government affairs and general counsel at ACA — to learn more about this event and its success.
Aftermarket Business World: What message did you take to Capitol Hill this year?
Lisa Foshee: The message that we took to Capitol Hill was asking for support for the Repair Act. As you may know, the auto manufacturers today are restricting access to repair and maintenance data to drive repairs to their franchise dealerships. That is then preventing folks from going to their independent repair shop, which is almost always cheaper and almost always has a shorter repair time. By depriving the market of competition, it's going to force vehicle owners to more expensive and less accessible options. So, the federal bill is very important to our industry, and frankly to every American family.
Aftermarket Business World: What was your involvement in the event?
Foshee: As the head of government affairs, it was my responsibility to coordinate the Hill Day to make sure that all of our members received their meetings, to make sure that they were equipped with talking points and all the materials to make their meetings effective. As well as ensuring they felt confident in the message that they were carrying on the industry's behalf, and to do everything that we could as a group to elevate our success and our message.
Aftermarket Business World: How did you spread your message — apart from your meetings with House and Senate — throughout Capitol Hill?
Foshee: One of the fun ways we do that is we have Auto Care orange ties for all the gentlemen and orange scarves for all the women. When you take 300 people to Capitol Hill, all wearing matched apparel, it makes a huge impact. I can't tell you how many people were stopped and asked, “Who are you? Why are you here? What are you interested in? What are your issues?” While it seems like an inconsequential thing, it makes a huge impact when you have that kind of branding as a group.
Aftermarket Business World: How successful do you think the event was?
Foshee: We were thrilled with the event. The collective voice of our industry was powerful. Having folks be able to have one-on-one conversations with their elected officials and really stress to them that this is not just an abstract concept was amazing. This issue is one that is affecting both their businesses and the constituents.
Talking face-to-face was important. Because it’s one thing to hear about something in the abstract, and it's entirely different to have someone explain to you how it's impacting their fifth-generation family business.
We know that we had an impact from the feedback that we received in all the meetings. We also know that we had an impact because the Alliance for Automotive Innovation — which is the trade association that represents the auto manufacturers — spent a lot of money to hire trucks with digital billboards to drive around Congress the week of our summit opposing the repair act.
We take that as a compliment, because they clearly were concerned about our members coming to have these conversations, and felt that they needed to engage in negative advertising to combat our efforts. As I said, we took that as a compliment that our message is being heard.
