VERITAS: TOUCHDOWN - MILLER'S MESSAGE RIDES HIGH ON TTC PA SYSTEM

This week's perspective from Bob Reid:

“The medium is the message,” Marshall McLuhan famously opined. Personally, I have always found the play on words to be kind of cloying, but his point was – and remains – nonetheless valid: the channel through which you communicate has a great deal to do with how effective you’ll be at reaching your target audience with your message. David Miller is taking criticism from some political opponents, but the Toronto Mayor’s use of the TTC’s public address system to rally riders to lobby Queen’s Park for more transit funding is a communications Touchdown. Miller’s message (which has absolutely nothing new about it) is not only being heard directly by the audience most affected by the issue, but the tactic itself – helped by the controversy around it – is being amplified tremendously by the resulting earned media coverage, and getting heard far beyond the limits of the city’s subway station platforms.