Then, there’s the media plan. 

The significant $75 million budget meant that the ad aired across primetime World Series programming on Fox, ESPN, and Bloomberg, and benefited from the perfect media context of a sporting contest between the two countries and the massive audience that this delivered. 

We also need to talk about TV advertising too here. 

Never in my marketing lifetime have I seen such a disjuncture between how effective TV advertising is versus how futile many marketers now consider it to be. I talk to marketing professors who tell me most students now believe “no one watches TV ads.” I see the incredulous look on the faces of younger brand managers when the option of TV comes up versus their preferred move of doubling down on TikTok or influencers. 

It’s become culturally inappropriate to even suggest TV ads in many companies. 

Let’s be clear. TV is not what it once was, but that doesn’t stop TV advertising from continuing to be an incredibly potent force when the context is right. 

We’ve lived through an age of micro-targeting and personalization, often forgetting that mass marketing has just as big a role to play. 

The Ontario ad reached an initial target audience of at least 25 million viewers last week, which amplified up to 100 million with digital replays and news coverage. 

And remember this isn’t not just a bigger audience: it’s a more interactive one too. People don’t crowd around a smartphone for digital display ads and then discuss its implications. But when you air a sixty-second ad on Friday’s ESPN World Series, there are usually multiple eyeballs on it, and multiple points of discussion after. 

Then, add unmatched signaling value and social capital to the broad interactive reach. When a YouTube preroll ad drops into someone’s feed, they usually wonder why they’re being targeted. 

When they see an ad on TV, however, they assume everyone else in the country is seeing it at the same time too. Ontario didn’t tell you that tariffs were bad for America over the weekend. It told everyone.

There are arguments to be made for any advertising medium. But over the weekend, along with further evidence of the interesting times we inhabit and the potential for this World Series to become a classic, marketers got a valuable reminder that when the context is right and when strategy, creative, media, and budgeting are done properly, nothing beats the agenda-setting, Trump-rattling, mass-market impact of a great TV ad.

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