The New Dealership Playbook: Force Marketing’s Network Rewires Auto Retail

ATLANTA, GA – September 14, 2026 – In a move that signals a fundamental rewiring of the automotive retail ecosystem, Atlanta-based Force Marketing has expanded its suite of OEM certified partnerships to include Acura, Honda, Hyundai, and Nissan. While on the surface this appears to be a standard business expansion, a deeper look reveals a strategic consolidation of the fragmented and often chaotic marketing infrastructure that local dealerships navigate daily. By bringing its total to 16 OEM certifications, the company is building a more centralized, intelligent network that aims to connect manufacturers, retailers, and consumers through a single, data-driven backbone.

This expansion allows thousands of Tier 3 dealerships—the local retailers on the front lines of auto sales—to access a unified marketing platform that is pre-approved by their manufacturing partners. For years, dealerships have juggled a sprawling array of vendors for everything from search engine optimization to social media and direct mail. This new, integrated approach promises to replace that complexity with a streamlined system, a single point of contact that orchestrates the entire customer journey, from the first online search to the post-purchase service reminder.

The End of Vendor Sprawl?

The primary value proposition of this expanded certification lies in its potential to dramatically increase operational efficiency for dealerships. By integrating with a certified partner like Force Marketing, retailers can ensure their campaigns are not only effective but also compliant with stringent OEM brand guidelines. This alignment is critical for maximizing co-op reimbursement funds, a vital financial lifeline where manufacturers help cover local advertising costs. The new partnerships with Acura, Honda, Hyundai, and Nissan join an impressive roster that already includes major players like Porsche, Audi, Stellantis, Subaru, and GM Canada.

“It is critical that we are partners on every list and we are proud to now have 16 partnerships,” said John Fitzpatrick, president and CEO of Force Marketing. He emphasized that OEM certification accelerates a dealership's speed to market, maximizes co-op funds, and crucially, “improves the connected consumer journey from OEM to local dealer.”

This connected journey is the core of the strategy. Instead of disparate campaigns that can lead to disjointed customer experiences, the platform allows for a full-funnel, omnichannel strategy coordinated by a single entity. This eliminates the data silos and communication gaps that arise from managing multiple vendors, ensuring a consistent and personalized message whether a customer is scrolling through social media, watching streaming TV, or receiving an email about a service appointment. For a dealership's marketing director, this translates to less time spent managing vendors and more time focused on strategy and results.

Building the AI-Powered Digital Backbone

The true engine behind this consolidation is Force Marketing's proprietary technology, particularly its Audience iQ customer data platform (CDP). Launched in 2023, Audience iQ serves as the central nervous system, unifying a dealership's first-party data from its website, CRM, and Dealer Management System (DMS). By applying artificial intelligence to this unified dataset, the platform identifies customer patterns and behaviors, enabling the creation of highly targeted and personalized marketing campaigns that reduce ad waste and increase ROI.

Several key solutions built on this AI backbone showcase the technological depth of the offering:

• DRIVE: This award-winning streaming media solution moves beyond generic ads by generating dynamic, VIN-specific videos from a dealership’s live inventory. An in-market shopper browsing Hulu or YouTube TV could be served a video ad for a specific car available on a local lot. Crucially, the platform closes the attribution loop by using geofencing and household data graphs to track which ad views translate into physical showroom visits, connecting digital spend directly to foot traffic.

• Conquest Connect: In an era defined by data privacy concerns and the death of the third-party cookie, this tool offers a forward-looking solution. It uses Audience iQ’s AI to follow shopper decisions in real time without relying on cookies, dynamically shifting messaging across channels based on user behavior. This allows for privacy-compliant personalization, a critical capability in today's regulatory environment.

• ATOM®: Focusing on the often-neglected back end of the business, this service retention platform integrates with the dealer’s DMS to automate multi-channel communications. By sending strategically timed messages for service reminders or trade-in offers, ATOM® aims to maximize customer lifetime value, turning a one-time sale into a long-term relationship.

The Strategic Value of the OEM Handshake

Achieving OEM certification is more than a marketing credential; it has become the new gold standard for technology providers in the automotive sector. In a competitive landscape that includes giants like Cox Automotive's Dealer.com, these partnerships serve as a powerful differentiator. Certification signifies a deep level of trust and technical integration, assuring both the OEM and its dealer network that the platform is secure, compliant, and capable of delivering on its promises.

For OEMs, who are increasingly aspiring to build more direct relationships with their end customers, certified partners provide a controlled and consistent channel to influence local marketing. It ensures that the brand's message is communicated accurately while still allowing for local customization. This alignment is becoming more important as the industry shifts toward software-defined vehicles and integrated digital experiences, where the data connection between the car, the customer, the dealer, and the manufacturer is paramount.

This unified approach allows for the aggregation of cleaner, more powerful data, enabling better market insights for both the OEM and the dealership. It represents a strategic move away from a fragmented past and toward an integrated future where technology providers act as the essential connective tissue in the automotive sales network. As consumer expectations for seamless digital-to-physical journeys continue to rise, the strength of this underlying digital infrastructure will increasingly determine who wins in the auto retail market.