Network uses Home Show to build brand, broker awareness

Gary Mauris is billing Dominion Lending Centres’s sponsorship of three of the largest home shows in Canada as a profile boost for all brokers, and not just his members.

Gary Mauris is billing Dominion Lending Centres’s sponsorship of three of the largest home shows in Canada as a profile boost for all brokers, and not just his members.

“It is another way we leverage our advertising, and the Home Show is in our wheelhouse,” the DLC head told MortgageBrokerNews.ca, pointing to shows in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. “ReMax has been a major sponsor at the home shows, and the banks have been heavily involved – we want to have a larger presence to raise the profile of mortgage brokers.”

As the Family Day sponsor for the BC Home & Garden Show on February 21, the Calgary Home & Garden Show (March 1) and the National Home Show & Canada Blooms in Toronto on March 15, the network will provide activities and giveaways focused on children and their parents.

“It’s a great opportunity to bring families together,” says Mauris, president of Dominion Lending Centres. “We’ve worked with the Home Show in years previous, but this is part of a larger corporate initiative that we will carry on for the foreseeable future.”

Some of those activities sponsored by DLC will include face painting, crafts, and Bob the Builder shows, with free admission for DLC agents and clients part of the package.

But the industry is more interested in tracking how effective the marketing and outreach strategy will be in yielding future business for the network and its members as the market slows.

Those eyes were also on DLC’s recent Super Bowl ads, with industry analysis mixed on whether the bang for the buck will extend past the DLC brand and its agents to mortgage professionals outside the network.

Still, some brokers have used the high-profile campaign as a call for associations, lenders and other networks increase their own presence in print and other media -- a way of better educating Canadians on the services of brokers.