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$5 million for Pan Am Games advertisement

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TORONTO

A single slick advertisement for the TO2015 Pan Am and Para-Pan Am Games cost over $5 million to produce and air on television, in movie theatres and flights across the country, the Toronto Sun has learned.

And the government agency responsible for creating the ad won’t say how much more it plans to spend to continue to publicize the games.

Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request, and provided to the Sun, show the Ontario government, through the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corp., spent over $1.5-million to create the so-called “Invade” campaign. It then spent $3.7 million to buy ad time on television, movie theatres, online and on Air Canada in-flight TV for a spot that runs just over a minute long.

The ad shows athletes from numerous Pan Am sports invade Toronto. People in kayaks row towards the city; riders on horse-back charge through residential neighbourhoods; baseball players face off on an eerily vacant Bay St. The entire time a dark and booming cover version of the 1968 Delfonics song “Ready or Not” plays.

The ads ran for 13 weeks in the fall and winter of 2014.

Niagara Falls resident Bert Dandy Sr. saw the ads on television and wanted to know what they cost and filed the Freedom of Information request. When the cost-breakdown came back, he was surprised.

“It was a beautiful ad, that’s what struck me,” Dandy said. “The production values. The camera angles. There must have been helicopters involved in this, cranes. The number of extras.”

Dandy said he’s not opposed to the idea of international competitions like the Pan Am Games, he’s just not a fan of waste. That’s what he says the ad campaign amounts to.

“Fix the road, educate the kids, pay my doctor,” he said. “Run the province responsibly. No private business iagara Falls would get carried away to this level, $5-million on an ad?”

“It’s 1% of our deficit. Find 99 more silly examples and we’ve got a balanced budget.”

Lydia McCourt, spokesman for the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corp., said the agency considers the “Invade” campaign part of efforts to draw people to the province for the games.

“Attracting sport enthusiasts whose households spend annually over $4,000 on pleasure travel (the average among Ontario travellers) is an important part of the province’s tourism industry, which contributes $28-billion to the overall economy,” she said in an e-mail to the Sun.

McCourt said the ads will continue to run on YouTube where they have received more than 3.5 million views. The campaign has also won a number of awards, she said.

“The cost to produce and air the ‘Invade’ ad is in line with industry standards,” she said. “Its shoot involved approximately 150 amateur athletes and filming took place over seven days.”

The agency launched a new minute-long advertisement this week entitled “Get Ready.” McCourt could not say how much was spent on the ad or what the agency’s budget for Pan Am Games advertising is, instead offering to help the Sun file a Freedom of Information request for the figures.

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Ontario’s opposition parties want to know how much the government is spending to advertise the TO 2015 Pan Am Games.

NDP MPP Paul Miller and PC MPP Todd Smith say they have filed questions with the government, essentially formal requests, for line-by-line advertising budgets on the Pan Am Games. Both men severe as their parties respective critics on the games file. They expect to receive a response sometime in May.

Miller told the Sun he’s seen the $5 million cost of the single “Invade” advertisement and wonders if the province will see enough revenue on ticket sales for the games to justify the expenditure.

“That’s $5 million so far,” Miller said. “I have my doubts that they’re going to recover enough to even cover that. I don’t think they’re going to get the bang for the buck they want.”

He said he’s been frustrated since “day one” getting information about the games. He’s not surprised Niagara Falls resident Bert Dandy, Sr. had to file the Freedom of Information request to get numbers on the “Invade” ad.

“They’re not in a hurry to release any information,” Miller said.

Smith said that the spending on the “Invade” campaign is “just the tip of the iceberg.”

And at a time when the province is laying off nurses and talking about cuts to winter road maintenance spending, shelling out to promote the games extravagantly doesn’t make a lot of sense, he said.

“We’ve seen that spending is out of control,” Smith said. “I don’t think that promoting the Pan Am Games is a priority for most people in Ontario.” 

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