One DLC broker feels everyone in the channel won with those Super Bowl ads and is asking other broker networks to step up with their own consumer-focused advertising meant to lift the profile of mortgage professionals.
Who benefited from Dominion Lending’s Super Bowl advertising? Brokers or that brand?
Fern Brunet, a DLC broker, feels everyone in the channel won with those two ads on Sunday, and is asking other broker networks to step up with their own consumer-focused advertising meant to lift the profile of mortgage professionals.
“Really the whole industry wins here,” he said. “Something needs to be done to overcome the public mentality of going into a bank, and (instead) promote the great options and products brokers provide.
“I would hope other brokerages take on the challenge! The industry needs it and we will all win!”
Those DLC have been been both lauded and criticized by brokers across the channel as they attempt to gauge the success of that kind of exposure. Opinions have usually broken down along party lines, still, Brunet argues all brokers can agree that more public attention needs to be cast on professional that still fly below the radar of most Canadians.
Still, broker like Derek Rowley of Real Mortgage Associates sees the Super Bowl ads as benefitting the DLC brand, but not much more.
“The DLC Super Bowl Ad will without a doubt add to the DLC brand recognition, but I have serious thoughts as to whether it will impact DLC, especially their agents, with more business,” he told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “Come on, it’s an ad campaign for DLC and also a possible recruitment tool - but I don’t believe that it will solidify any substantial increase in business.”
The positive reactions to the ads are primarily from those who work with or at DLC, Rowley points out.
But the ads have renewed calls for CAAMP, broker networks and lenders to work together to mount sustained advertising campaigns specifically focused on hawking the services of brokers and not a designation or, even, the lenders, themselves.
Brokers are also re-examining the idea of a group marketing fund, drawing from the commissions of all mortgage professionals.
“You take 10 people on the street and ask them to name a mortgage brokerage, and many of them can’t,” said Chad Gregory, DLC director of broker and agent development for Eastern Canada. “You ask the same people to name a real estate firm, and they can name at least two or three. Why shouldn’t mortgage brokers have the same type of recognition?”
