Ontario’s $75M World Series Ad Brilliantly Played Trump and the Media

If you watched the World Series over the weekend, when the Los Angeles Dodgers came back to level the series against the Toronto Bluejays, you’ll know the Fall Classic is balanced on a knife edge. 

And if you caught the ads during the game, you’ll also know that the much bigger contest between the U.S. and Canada is just as finely poised.

In an extraordinary move, Ontario’s regional government launched a 60-second spot taking direct aim at the Trump administration and its tariffs on Canadian trade. 

“Our intention was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build,” Premier Doug Ford, Ontario’s populist leader behind the ad, insisted last week in a statement.

Ontario is especially vulnerable to American tariffs because of its deep economic dependence on U.S. trade – over 77% of the province’s goods and 60% of its services export to the United States. Its manufacturing sector is particularly exposed, with import prices for raw materials and export prices for finished vehicles likely to increase significantly under the new tariffs.

And don’t underestimate the role of wily Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in all this. 

This campaign presents him with ingenious political leverage in the ongoing negotiations with President Trump. By allowing Doug Ford’s provincial government to take the fight public without formally involving him, Carney shifts from a binary conflict with Trump to becoming a third-party who can provide diplomatic restraint and bargaining power from the sidelines. The campaign becomes a tactical decoy enabling Carney to argue both sides at once: conciliatory with Trump, supportive to Ontario.

President Trump’s response was predictably vituperative. The ad was “FAKE” in misrepresenting Reagan’s views. “ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” he announced. 

Still seething about the ad over the weekend, Trump announced a further 10% increase in Canadian tariffs, directly because of Ontario’s commercial. 

Trump is clearly rattled. And that might prove a risky outcome in the era of “don’t fuck around with America.” But the ad has certainly delivered on its stated goal of initiating a conversation with the U.S. about tariffs while demonstrating to Canadian voters that something is being done. It may not be up there with “Morning in America” but this is astute, high stakes political advertising. 

Strategically, it’s clever stuff. 

The use of Reagan’s voice and free market philosophy is the kind of positioning judo we rarely see in modern marketing. The spot itself, created in-house by Ontario’s own communications team, is a slick combination of slow fades and piano with a solid emotional charge. 

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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