Metrolinx paid about $30,000 for Instagram “influencers” to promote provincial transit projects in a controversial ad campaign last year, the Star has learned.

The public agency, which oversees transit in the GTHA, has refused to reveal how much taxpayer money it spent on the ads, but the figure was included in internal Metrolinx emails the Star obtained through a freedom of information request.

The dollar amount is small for Metrolinx, a provincial Crown corporation that has an annual operating budget of more than $1.1 billion, and the emails show that officials in the provincial government, which oversees the agency, wanted to release the number when journalists started to ask about it in November.

But Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster resisted, arguing that disclosing how much the Instagram ads cost would set a precedent that would make it harder to keep spending on future marketing campaigns under wraps.

“Please, do not release the costs,” Verster wrote in a Nov. 24, 2019 email to Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney’s office.

Verster warned that if the number was made public, “for the next few years” the disclosure would “be used to leverage out more questions (about) costs of any other campaigns we have.”

When asked about the emails Wednesday, Metrolinx spokesperson Fannie Sunshine sent a statement to the Star that reiterated previous comments from agency officials, who have said the campaign costs were “commercially sensitive” and Metrolinx didn’t release it them order to protect its ability to negotiate future marketing initiatives.

Ontario NDP transit critic Jessica Bell rejected that argument Wednesday.

“Negotiations with advertisers should not be as important as being a transparent and accountable organization,” the University-Rosedale MPP said in an interview.

“This is our transit organization, it uses our money to provide service for us. Metrolinx should be transparent so that we all know it’s making the best decisions for public transit and the public good.”

For the campaign, Metrolinx contracted 11 social media personalities to promote its plans for GO Transit expansion, the Hurontario LRT, and the Ontario Line, under the tag line, “It’s Happening.”

The emails show the agency partnered on the campaign with Toronto-based public relations firm North Strategic, which lists “influencer marketing” as one of its specialties and has done campaigns for Airbnb, GoDaddy and Samsung, among others.

The Metrolinx campaign included posts like one from Marlie Cohen, a fitness and “realness” blogger whose @kale_and_krunches Instagram account has more than 44,000 followers. The sponsored image Cohen posted showed her standing in front of a Leslieville mural holding her baby, accompanied by a caption extolling the virtues of the Ontario Line, the provincial government’s planned $11-billion rail line that would run from Exhibition Place to the Ontario Science Centre. It isn’t scheduled to open until 2027 at the earliest.

While all the Instagram posts Metrolinx sponsored were tagged as advertisements, at first glance there was little to distinguish them from regular images posted to the social media platform.

Residents groups from Leslieville and other areas criticized the social media advertising as misleading on the grounds that it made it look as though there was organic local support for the Ontario Line, when in fact many residents along its proposed route have protested the project over concerns about how its above-ground alignment could disrupt their neighbourhoods.

Metrolinx defended the campaign at the time, saying that using social media influencers was a modern way to communicate with the public, allowing the agency to inform a younger audience about important transit projects.

The CBC was the first to report on the “influencer” ads, and a journalist from the national broadcaster sent questions about them to Metrolinx on Friday, Nov. 22.

From the outset, some Metrolinx staff initially didn’t think revealing the costs was a good idea.

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Metrolinx director of digital marketing Sharyn Byrne-Nearing wrote to a colleague, saying: “Cool cool! Just don’t give them any $ deets,” using a slang word for “details.”

The CBC published its story online the next day, and noted Metrolinx didn’t provide costs of the ads. The story quoted Anne Marie Aikins, Metrolinx’s director of media, as saying “we don’t have a separate budget line for influencer costs.”

But other news outlets including the Star began asking about the campaign that weekend, and by Sunday, Nov. 24, the issue had the attention of staffers at the highest level of the Ontario PC government.

Aikins told colleagues in an email that day that the premier and minister’s offices “would like us to disclose an overall dollar figure for (the) influencer campaign.” The plan was to reveal the total spending amount but not how much each social media personality was paid, as individual contracts were considered confidential.

Aikins said she’d received three calls from the minister’s office asking about the issue.

“They want (the dollar figure) tonight. They are very concerned this (story is) unnecessarily negative,” she wrote.

That evening, CEO Verster wrote his email to the minister’s office asking it not to release the costs. His argument appears to have won out, as neither Metrolinx nor the provincial government revealed the costs that Sunday.

On Nov. 26, four days after the CBC’s initial inquiry, Metrolinx and government staffers were still discussing how to handle questions about the campaign costs. A spokesperson for Mulroney again suggested revealing the $30,000 figure and Metrolinx drafted statements that included the dollar amount, but the agency never used them.

While Metrolinx has publicly stood by the campaign, the emails indicate that there were divisions within the agency about whether it had been well-received.

On Monday, Nov. 25, an official in Metrolinx’s marketing department analyzed initial coverage of the influencer ads and concluded public reaction had mostly been neutral.

Aikins didn’t agree. She wrote back saying stories about the campaign had forced Metrolinx into “damage control.” In an email to colleagues over the weekend she had said: “I am taking a ton of flack over this one on Twitter. My feed is inundated with awful criticism related to (the Ontario Line).”

Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr

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