TORONTO— After fighting Kathleen Wynne and seeing her party swept out of government, an online group that has mastered modern messaging is turning its fire power on Justin Trudeau.

“We were pivotal,” Ontario Proud founder Jeff Ballingall said about his group’s role in ousting the Ontario Liberals after 15 years in government.

Ontario Proud’s Facebook presence is unrivalled by the political parties and other third party groups registered with Elections Ontario.

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Up and running for less than three years, the third party has a bigger following on Facebook than all of the provincial parties and leaders combined. That translated to more engagement online than any other group during the writ period from May 9 to June 7, Ballingall said.

In that time he said Ontario Proud clocked in 63.6 million Facebook impressions and people watched 3.7 million minutes of Ontario Proud videos.

Pushing what he calls an “aggressively centre-right moderate” perspective, Ballingall said. The memes and videos focus on affordability issues and responsible and accountable government. They also include unflattering pictures of Wynne and other politicians and sometimes veer into the personal attacks that political parties usually won’t risk.

Digital strategist at Hill and Knowlton Lindsay Finneran-Gingras crunched the numbers throughout the election and said the group’s role in promoting a Conservative message isn’t overstated.

“Ontario Proud dominated every single social and digital channel and conversation during the election and, looking at the data, also before the election,” she said.

The group has already taken aim at Trudeau on issues like changes to small business taxes and his controversial India trip. But since Doug Ford’s dramatic election win last week much more of Ontario Proud’s posts on social media have been directed at Trudeau.

Over the weekend, it posted a photo on its Instagram page that read “Wynne down, Trudeau to go.”

Ballingall’s message to the federal Liberals: “Watch out.”

“Social media is allowing people to fight back, we’re able to tap into growing resentment about affordability issues, about government waste, about corruption and scandal,” he said. “There’s no longer a monopoly on the political discourse, we’re able to reach people and mobilize them.”

So far Ontario Proud has used its platform to a powerful effect. For example, Finneran-Gingras said while it didn’t create Wynne’s low popularity ratings, Ontario Proud helped them sink lower.

Their posts called Wynne politically corrupt, focused on her low polling numbers and directly tied her to controversies like cutting power in the dead of winter.

Especially in the weeks after Patrick Brown’s ouster as Ontario Progressive Conservative party leader, Finneran-Gingras said Ontario Proud “was able to keep a consistent anti-Wynne message out there,” even while the PCs were overwhelmed with their own internal crisis.

Liberal strategist and a co-founder of Pomp & Circumstance, Amanda Alvaro said she believes groups like Ontario Proud can be “powerful drivers of a message because people are unaware of their true motives.”

“They can appear, on first glance, to be editorial or news-like, vs being a communication vehicle of a political party or political leaning,” she said in an email.

Ontario Proud faces a different ballgame on the federal field

In the lead up to next year’s federal election Ballingall said he’ll put “a heavy focus” on the Trudeau government.

“We want to defeat them,” he said. Adding that his goal is a government that will “lower taxes, that will make life more affordable for Canadians.”

But even with its wide reach, Finneran-Gingras said the group faces a “very different” dynamic on the federal stage. Importantly, she said, while Trudeau’s popularity has flagged its no where near the lows that Wynne faced in Ontario.

“It poses a threat in that its another voice speaking against Trudeau, but I don’t think it’s the same level of threat that they posed to Wynne,” she said. Still Finneran-Gingras said there’s a “risk” if the Liberals don’t counter the messages pushed by Ontario Proud with their own content that connects with people online.

Alvaro said she views the group as “more of a nuisance than a threat.”

“I don’t think anyone in the party is paying that much attention to them or their right-wing rants, memes and the like,” she said. But cautioned that would change “if they’re able to amass more funding or able to activate their followers.”

Ballingall said donations from more than 1,300 people allowed the group to spend to the $100,000 limit for third party advertising during the Ontario election and spend more than $300,000 in the lead up. Other donations were used to mobilize their followers. As part of its get out the vote campaign, Ballingall said Ontario Proud sent over a million text messages and made over 2.5 million phone calls.

‘Off-brand’ messaging and personal attacks

Unlike political parties, who are more restricted in what they can post to their pages, Ontario Proud has been able to grow its following with a-political posts and by testing the boundaries of personal attacks.

On Facebook, Ballingall said the group’s most watched video isn’t political at all. Instead its a video about the nine reasons to “celebrate” Canada. Posted last year ahead of Canada’s 150th birthday it beat out mainstream news sites like CBC in the most views on Facebook.

“We don’t want to be the drunk angry uncle at the dinner table,” Ballingall said in explaining why he also posts content about Canadian history, the Olympics, and winter woes.

“We talk a lot about politics, that’s our reason to be,” he said. “That’s why we want to inject humour. Being angry all the time is tiring, no one likes it.”

Finneran-Gingras says the variety in posts has the added benefit of letting Ontario Proud test out Facebook’s alogorithm with lots of different content to figure out what gets the most traction. “It’s part of the freedom they have of not being an official party page,” she said.

“They can experiment with content that might seem off-brand.”

Another luxury the group has is that it doesn’t have to play by the same rules when it comes to personal attacks. What appears to be the group’s most commonly used picture of Wynne shows her triumphant on election night in 2014. The gleeful picture is often used in posts highlighting affordability struggles facing Ontarians.

Calling Wynne “phony,” “heartless” and a “scumbag” and depicting her as the Grinch or a zombie (via the Toronto Sun) are all fair game according to Ballingall.

“I don’t think we go too, too far,” he said. “We use a mix of different content to get our message across.”

But Finneran-Gingras says they’re “ad hominen attacks […] that you would never see a party do because that is not how political parties treat each other.”

The reason she said is because it can too easily “backfire.”

Ontario Proud contending with a more crowded field

Even though its newer to the scene Ontario Proud is outpacing progressive groups like Leadnow and Press Progress in the digital world.

But another group called North 99 is starting to gain traction as the counter message to Ballingall’s group.

“They’re doing a great job on the opposite side,” he said.

The two groups use very similar strategies in their online content. With Ontario Proud recently zeroing in on Trudeau, North 99 has focused in on Donald Trump’s administration.

Finneran-Gingras said North 99 (which did not reply to an interview request) has higher engagement rates than Ontario Proud.

“Given their audience size they have a higher number of shares,” she said.

Its Facebook following of 49,000 people is far behind the 369,000 who follow Ontario Proud, but Ballingall’s group has already shown that can change quickly.

“They were the first but now everyone else has caught up so for them to continue to dominate the share is going to be increasingly hard because other people have looked to those tricks,” Finneran-Gingras said. If they don’t “transform” and “keep pushing the boundaries,” she said political parties and other third parties will catch up.

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