I just want to say welcome. I'm kind of, you know, the first one here. I'm oh, look at the anticipation. Okay, good. I mean, I'm done now. I'm ready. No, <laugh> anyways, I have given a lot of thought to this. When Tressa asked me to speak about branding and I was super thrilled to be asked by you to speak on this I believe I'm going to be sharing my personal views and what I believe there is a difference between branding and marketing. I took notes and I'm going to kind of refer to these just so I don't, I don't miss any really important points for you guys. But what really comes first branding or marketing, you know, what's the chicken or the egg, what's the difference between branding and marketing?
As you can see by my title, I'm the director of relationship development for Paul Davis' restoration of Idaho. My job is to bring in sales, increase sales for our agency. That's here, but I'm driven to do that by relationships versus traditional marketing. And I'm going to explain that and get into that a little bit further as I move forward.
Everybody talks about branding, but what actually is it? As you can see by the definition of branding, branding is the promotion of your company by means of being distinct. Okay. We all know the success of Nike. They don't have to say a word. They don't have to show a product, but everybody knows who they are by their logo, by their brand, that everybody knows who they are. Okay. I believe in branding my company by the combination of my behavior and strategic placement of my brand, I believe who we are 24 7.
And that if you brand correctly and consistently, and you believe in your company, I think you can achieve successful branding at all times, not just during the work hours, not just the eight hours that you technically are at work. I represent our company as boots on the ground at community events throughout the valley. I'm given the opportunity and think about that. I'm given the opportunity by my company to give back to the community while working. I value that in a company I'm given that opportunity.
A lot of the times I'm not sales centric with my activities and that all of my work isn't sales driven or directly leads driven. I'm going to get into that more too. As I continue. And these pictures right here, we're hosting a, a community educational event for youth. I'm not selling anything. It was a two day long event in the, in the, in the valley here over at Home Depot, we hosted, organized, coordinated, and pushed the event on social media.
In fact, Eric back here is the person that actually did all of the work for that in advance, but we did not sell anything at that event. It's really important to note, we didn't sell anything.
It was showing that we care and our company cares enough to give our time to help others. And for me, it was also about wearing my brand. I want people to connect me to my brand so that when they need my service, they think about me, okay, this is promoting my brand without any direct ask or direct sale. We didn't sign anybody up. We didn't collect any names. We didn't hold a raffle. We had a table there just in order to put our supplies, but we didn't sell anything there. We built relationships with the vendors, with our educational partners, with the kids and the families.
They knew who we are. I hope they remember us. And so we pushed our brand by giving back with my involvement. I'm building those relationships that are going to pay off later on. By the way, I do believe in wearing a brand front and back. So <laugh> forward coming and going. And I'm going to talk about this again, because I want people to know when I'm teaching or talking in front of people. And I turn around to do anything that they know who I am, especially if I'm sitting in the front of the room. I was at the MAs prayer breakfast this morning. Guess what? Everybody behind me knew who I was. <Laugh> yeah.
Again, branding is the promotion of a particular product or company, right? We handed out candy, two thousands of children at Meridian trunk or treat literally 3000 kids came through the lines at trunk or treat.
We took the restoration van. We dressed up in our own, honestly, our tyvek suits and I had masks on, I had a vacuum cleaner strap to my back, like the Ghostbuster machine. And we interacted. And the thing is, we didn't just give out candy. We were the Ghostbusters, right? But we didn't just pass out candy. We actually interacted with the kids and with the families, we gave them an experience. We played with them. We literally, they were taking pictures of us as I was trying to, you know, stuck the Ghostbuster stuff around the kids' heads, you know, and things.
But we had everybody chanting. Who you gonna call, call Paul! We had everybody chanting that it wasn't just the kids. It was the adults because we were having fun with them. But the kids, guess what the adults were there. And who's the decision makers in families when they have loss. It's the adults that were there.
And again, I didn't sell anything. I didn't give out any collateral, but you could see Paul Davis there. Who are you going to call? Call Paul. Okay. So we asked, I did have parents ask us about questions. Oh, well, I have this water in my crawlspace. I answered their questions. I didn't ask for their number at that point, call me, call Paul. You know by the way, Eric's called Paul a lot. <Laugh> <laugh> anyways, we just went to this event to be part of the community, have fun with our equipment and our in our brand and then give back. And I think what was neat about it, it was actually fun too. I, I loved it. The next one.
Okay. They are different definitions. Some people think it's the same thing. I don't think it's the same at all. And so marketing is more of an action of selling. It could be traditional sales routes. It can be sponsorships advertising. It's the active pursuit of asking for direct sales in these sales centric. Examples right here. I would be sponsoring a CE class and talking talk, continuing education class for let's say insurance agents. Well, I'm actively asking for their business. At the end of that class, I'm asking that we use, they use us as a preferred provider. And so I'm asking for a sale, I'll be giving out lots of collateral that shows different collateral pieces. We have, we all have these kinds of things. And in fact, we all need to be doing these kinds of things for our business.
No matter what your business is, it's part of your marketing plan. It's part of a successful sales plan, but it's a combination of the two as a small business in a very competitive market. We may not have the largest staff. We may not have the largest marketing budget. So how do we actually gain market share when we don't have those dollars in this marketing plan of ours? You know, the cost of TV, radio and traditional marketing can be very expensive. So I think that we can, you know, and a lot of those also require a lot of repetition and continuous repetition. So that brand, it keeps getting put out. And again, you might be asking for that, but I don't, I think that's where behavioral planning can come into play. I'm going to have you think about it in a different way.
Look at that. I love this concept. This, I heard this concept and I was so jazzed up. I went to a women's event and there was a gal that got her PhD in social capital. I thought it was so fascinating. I totally resonated with me. My company hired me. I believe that my company, the owner of the company hired me because of the social capital I had behind my name. That's the capital I built in this community by giving of myself and my company, giving back with the numerous activities that I've done over the years. This capital brings in dollars, but not in that traditional sales method. Social capital is really a concept in social science that involves a potential of inter individuals to secure benefits and to advance solutions, to problems through membership and social networks.
What does that do? That brings in dollars. Okay. Inventing solutions to problems. What does that do? That brings in dollars. I love that term social capital and it's all through networks. That's the difference to me between successful branding and just a marketing plan. It shows the power of networking to build your brand. Everybody knows that famous quote. And I want you to raise your hand if you don't know this quote, okay. It's by theatre Roosevelt. Nobody cares how much, you know, until they know how much you care has anybody not heard that? See, everybody's heard that, but think about it with the effect of social capital, you can go out. I think it's it's and it it's only successful when you're sincere. And you are compassionate about that. I'm seeing Marlene nod her head. Yes, indeed. You've gotta be sincere, very sincere with this.
Just being present doesn't count. You can go on all the meetings and all the networking events that you want just being present really doesn't make a difference. I think it's being prepared, present and personal is what makes a difference. Eric knows what I'm talking about on that one. Okay. So let's go to this next slide. And this is, I'm going to summarize it by going back to branding versus marketing.
So in the first picture we participated in a national Paul Davis trash pickup date. This wasn't a community event. It wasn't distributed. It wasn't like Rake Up Boise, where we give teams, we just decided to do this. So we made Paul Davis buckets out of, you know, buckets you buy at home Depot. We dressed up in our Paul Davis shirts. We took the kids and the family and the significant others.
And we picked up 7,800 pieces of trash in downtown Boise. We didn't sell anything. We didn't pass anything out to anybody. People were asking us what we were doing, but because we had our brand on you, see, they'll remember us again. I'm hoping they do. Okay. In the second picture is a standard trade show booth. There we are standing there. Lots of swag, you know, lots of traditional collateral maybe a raffle cries that we're doing. All of that is good. We do it all the time. <Laugh> how many times am I at IBL events? All the time! We participate because we know it brings business in the door, direct sales, direct. We can pass out things. We can give out coupons. We can do discounts. We can do all kinds of things there that we can't do at a community event. So both of these are required in a good sales plan.
Okay. And I want to give that heart back into the community. I wear my brand with pride because my company has invested in me as my time to promoting my brand. We care. And the majority of the work that I do, doesn't bring in the direct sales, but it does keep me top of mind, which helps develop those long term relationships over time. It's funny. I've had so many people that have said I've been with Paul Davis since August. Like, man, you guys have grown so much. I see your trucks everywhere. You know, in all honesty, we're hoping to add a whole bunch of trucks, but we haven't added a single truck yet. What I really think they're seeing is they aren't seen as more they're seen as now because we are out branding the company, both Eric and I ton of work in the community. And so that's the benefit of social capital and networking.
Okay. We live by these. These are our serving basics. Remember I brought up, be prepared, present and personal that that's not just, you know, eye candy. It's not just shelf art. It is something we live by. Okay. If you look at the top three that we have up there, this is held from leadership down and meaning that we reward our own team. We talk about these every single week we reward and recognize those that display our serving basics could be a prize, could be a, a word of thanks. It could be recognition throughout our, our own network. But we actually do that. It's ensure your words and actions align with our brand promise, display your brand with pride, okay.
Coming and going. <Laugh> yeah. Create brand loyalty with everything that you do. I think this is really why Tessa really wanted me to speak today is, is that we didn't just make this up. This is something we live by. We, we preach this daily. We live our brand. We do it consistently with the hope that our brand is, is displayed by all of us equally. We interact with our clients in a lot of different places. A lot of us interact with our clients at different places. When we do help them, you know, we could have technicians, we could have the reconstruction, we could have Eric and I. So we're dealing with a lot of 'em. What we hope is this brand is, is displayed
Through each person with their entire experience with us. And so I think really believe that this is how behavioral branding, social capital and marketing can all work together to help any business become successful, no matter what your budget. Thank you all so much.