Cory Wagar Media Relations and development.

During the 2021 election, I was given a contract to be a media manager for NDP candidate Sasha Kane (Etobicoke-Lakeshore).  Because of the nature of a snap election, we didn’t have a candidate announced at the start. In addition to that, the candidate did not have their own social media accounts. So, the entire online presence for Sasha had to be created from scratch. This created some issues:

1. Due to the pandemic, there would need to be a strong focus on online campaigning and outreach.
2.  Social media platforms such as Twitter banned paid political advertisements.
3. Facebook and Instagram require special authorization for any paid political advertisements. which takes months for a person to be authorized. This process would be impractical to go through in a snap election. 

As media manager I was given a small budget to put together a team and create whatever buzz I could about Sasha.

We then had even more issues to deal with because of the nature of the candidate: 

At age 22, Sasha was one of the youngest candidates running in the entire country. She just finished university and thus had limited real world experiences to draw from, making it an uphill battle to convince undecided voters to vote for her. In addition to that she worked full time during the campaign, limiting the amount of time she had to work on tasks surrounding the campaign. She was a good candidate  that matched the demographics well and with my expertise, managed to easily be one of the most viral NDP candidates in the country.  Which helped get her name out there. She didn’t win, but she grew the vote total by 3% in an election that saw a massive decline in voting. With some assistance from the work I did as media manager, Sasha looked extremely professional and gathered a lot more media presence than most candidates. 

 

I was granted full control over the media portion of the campaign. I spent time getting to know Sasha so we could put together a solid plan. She was young which did give some advantages then a typical older candidate, and my main responsibilities were as follows: 

• 5 commercials: 

Sasha’s Campaign Announcement.

A more in-depth video getting to know Sasha.

An interview on why Sasha wants to run and what she wants to accomplish if elected. 

A youth registration video.

A video criticizing the liberal’s environmental plan. 

• Pitch to the media news stories about one of the youngest candidates running in the country. We got The Toronto Star and BlogTO to write about her campaign. 
• Launch a snapchat campaign (7500 unique users of our filter reaching about 20k people)
• Run and create content for the social media accounts.
• Teaching the candidate basic PR to relate to seniors and students better.

PR can make or break campaigns. Due to the nature of snap elections, the NDP party didn’t have time to teach their candidates PR. So, I stepped in to teach Sasha the ropes. I helped teach her:

 

• Debate and communication skills.
• Social media etiquette.
• proper body language.
• Engagement skills for when dealing with the press and the public.

 

We did run into a couple small bumps on the road regarding PR during this campaign and it was up to me to get us through them:

 

A bunch of people were spamming Toronto NDP candidates on their thoughts about one NDP candidate who said anti-Semitic remarks. So, we sent out a news release condemning the candidate and what they said without mentioning them or making the NDP look bad.

A news release about the liberal candidate who asked NDP supporters to vote for the conservative candidate on his pamphlet. Because according to them, the Conservatives were going to win even though the Conservatives were way behind in the riding. We exposed his lie and reinforced supporters to vote for us instead with our social media. 

I constructed Sasha’s public image of a young tough fighter that stood for the rights of the young and elderly.

I portrayed Sasha online as a fierce candidate that fought for seniors and students. Sasha knew quite a bit about NDP policy, and I made sure her media reflected that. She was also young, so we made sure to post some fun stuff because younger candidates have more leeway when it comes to having more playful social media posts. I also made her look very busy even with a full-time job, she still campaigned in the mornings before work. It worked as Sasha had quite a few viral moments during the campaign. 

 

We got Sasha in the Toronto Star and Blog.TO. They wrote about how bold and strong she is to be one of the youngest candidates running in the country. This really boosted her credibility because none of opponents could get into any local media. 

 

We have a few viral tweets on Twitter. We reached 254k impressions during the campaign.

                              

I noticed people really gravitated towards the sassy tweets although I only made a few. I aimed for 5-7 tweets a day about Sasha’s plans or whatever the issue of the day was. We made a few ground rules early on:

1.  Do not delete a valid criticism unless it’s hurtful.

2. Do not engage with said criticism’s

3. Sasha must approve of  any tweets about sensitive issues or race topics. 

Sasha ended up with 459 followers which for just a month and from scratch  is pretty good!

Sasha has regained control of her accounts and whatever has been posted from September 21th 2021 onwards is not reflective of my work.

Twitter: @SashaKaneEL

Instagram: sawha.kane (she has changed her handle since after the election.)

We decided to make Sasha 5 videos. The videos were all shot, edited, and directed by me (except for the little parts such as Trudeau or Jagmeet talking and the intro and outro establishing shots which were donated by a volunteer.) The ads captured Sasha’s personality and what the NDP wanted to accomplish. These videos legitimized Sasha. Not only was she the only candidate in the riding to have a video, but she also had 5 of them!

 1. Sasha’s campaign announcement.

2. A more in-depth video getting to know Sasha.

3. An interview on why Sasha wanted to run and what she wants to accomplish if she wins.

4. A youth registration video.

5. A video criticizing the liberal’s environmental plan. 

You can see the video’s at Sasha’s Instagram at sawsha.kane (she changed her handle after the election) or request high quality videos from me directly.