Trump’s Attack on Ontario’s Reagan Ad Helped Amplify Its Reach

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(Bloomberg) — In the global portfolio of political ads that changed history, a handful stand out.

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In the UK, the famed “Labour Isn’t Working” poster of 1978 has long been credited for helping Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government sweep to power the following year. Before that, the “Daisy” political ad, created for US President Lyndon B. Johnson’s campaign against Barry Goldwater, was pulled from the air for fear-mongering in 1964 — but also deemed tremendously effective.

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And late Thursday night, a 60-second spot from Ontario, Canada, based on excerpts from a 1987 radio address by former US President Ronald Reagan, caused President Donald Trump to end all trade talks between the two nations. The move threatens to further damage a bilateral trading relationship worth approximately $900 billion annually.

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced Friday afternoon the province would stop running the ads — but only after they aired during the two opening World Series baseball games this weekend. The move seemed to do little to placate Trump, who told reporters later Friday he was satisfied with the current trade arrangement with Canada and had no plans to meet Prime Minister Mark Carney during summits in Asia over the next week.

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While it’s too early to gauge the lasting effect of the campaign, its immediate impact was dramatic. Online views of the ad spiked, even as efforts to suppress it grew, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as the “Streisand Effect.” 

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As of 7:30 a.m. Friday in Toronto, the original social-media post from Ford containing the ad had been viewed 578,000 times over eight days. Five hours later that figure was a million. By Saturday morning, it had reached 1.5 million.

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“The funny irony here is that in the wake of Trump’s post, now the whole world knows what Reagan said about tariffs as opposed to this just being targeted ads by the Ontario government,” said Bank of Nova Scotia economist Derek Holt. 

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When the province announced the C$75 million ($54 million) ad spend, it said it would air on stations including Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN, Newsmax and Bloomberg Television. 

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Seventy-five million dollars is a “a pretty sizable number,” especially for a Canadian advertising budget, said Brian Wieser, a former advertising executive who now works as a Wall Street analyst covering advertising companies. “There’s more money spent on political advertising alone in the United States than spent on all advertising in Canada.” 

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But what matters most is having a clear media strategy, including knowing who your target audience is, he said. “What was the goal? The goal is to reverse American policy, I guess,” he said. “Were they intending to needle Trump? I don’t know if that was actually part of the brief.”

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Ford has said the ad was meant to target Republican-held districts in the US, and that he hoped the “Reagan Republicans” would win against “the MAGA group” in the debate over protectionist trade policies.