Social media is making its way from our phones to the tables of many restaurants, attracting the attention of Ottawa residents and tourists. Photo by Rajpreet Sahota.
Ottawa restaurants are turning to influencers to attract a younger generation of customers in the post-pandemic era.
Maddy Hadfield, opens her phone and types an email to an Ottawa-based restaurant. She offers to create and share content on her Instagram and in return, receive a free dinner from the business.
Hadfield is a micro-influencer, known as The Ottawa Diaries on Instagram.
Micro-influencers are everyday people who have a following of between 1,000 and 10,000 people and share content based on their genuine experiences.
As a micro-influencer, Hadfield built an online community by posting photos of her favourite cafés and restaurants, which, she said, eventually led to collaborations and sponsorships with many restaurants and businesses around Ottawa.
“I just wanted to share with people that Ottawa isn’t as boring as its reputation,” said Hadfield, “It was just a hobby. I just turned my personal Instagram into being about Ottawa because I found that I was already sharing a lot of things I was doing in the city.”
According to Aron Darmody, an associate professor of marketing at Carleton University, micro-influencers create trust with their audience to further their relationships with local businesses. Generally, they promote brands and in return, receive financial compensation for the customer engagement generated by their posts.
“More and more marketing tools are becoming a part of our everyday lives,” Darmody said. “Back in the day, people might look at a TV ad, newspapers or magazines. We had a great, clear understanding of what a commercial is in a way that things like social media started to change. It is blurring boundaries between the personal and commercial sides of life.”
Darmody said that it’s vital for businesses to have a social media presence as a direct line of communication with their customers.
Over the pandemic, Darmody said, many businesses have turned to influencer marketing to attract customers, largely young adults. And, according to a pair of restaurant owners based in Ottawa, social media influencers are helping to increase sales and changing the future of how they approach marketing.
A customer scrolls through Stay Gold Pizza’s Instagram before choosing their meal. Photo by Rajpreet Sahota.
Expanding their reach
Restaurant owner Puong Hoang said social media engagement has proven a great success for his business, Stay Gold Pizza on Elgin Street.
Hoang recommends other restaurants collaborate with Ottawa-based food influencers as it cost him between $150 and $300 but helped him garner a following of over five thousand people who care about what’s fresh at Stay Gold Pizza.
“Every single time we did a contest with these viral accounts, we had a bump up between a hundred, 300 followers,” he said adding that some posts would get between 5,000 and 10,000 views. “That’s huge for a small account like ours.”
With the rise of social media, some restaurants have captured an especially far reach.
“We get a lot of people taking pictures of themselves with milkshakes. It has always been a place where young people gather, especially like university students,” said Kate Rutledge, the co-owner of Zak’s Diner in Kanata. “I’ve had lots of people say, ‘Oh, I saw it on this and so we thought we’d come and check it out,’ and they’re from B.C.”
In the digital age, influencers have more power than ever to encourage others to buy or try a certain product. According to a 2016 study that gauged influencer marketing strategies, more than 80 per cent of participants found influencers to be more impactful, knowledgeable and believable than the general population.
What influencing comes down to, according to Darmody, is knowing your audience and your influence.
“If your target market is people primarily in their 20s, are you going to advertise on local TV? Are you going to pick up magazine ads?” Darmody said.
“What micro-influencers often offer is kind of smaller numbers, obviously in terms of followers, but sort of a much higher level of engagement. The idea is that if people are following these micro-influencers, they’re doing so for very specific reasons. If you just have a smaller number of followers, it’s easier to engage.”
Maddy Hadfield, also known as The Ottawa Diaries, sits in Milestones Lansdowne in February, 2021. She started her blogging journey in 2018 and has since garnered thousands of followers for her lifestyle and food content. Photo provided by Troy Curtis.
Appealing to under-40s
The importance of reaching a target audience is crucial to success as an influencer, according to Hadfield.
“If your business is on Facebook, great, but you’re only being seen by people who are 40 or up. If you want to be visible to the younger generation, you have to meet them where they are and that’s really on Instagram,” Hadfield said.
By finding the right platform, the business markets itself. This was the case for Stay Gold Pizza, which saw Instagram users advertising the Elgin Street restaurant themselves.
“We somehow caught on to this trend of people unboxing our pizzas. People are going out of their way to order pizzas and posting videos on their stories. Then it spreads like wildfire where you’re kind of getting a larger demographic,” said Hoang.
Since the pandemic, Stay Gold Pizza has extended their business beyond pizza, including selling merchandise like hats.
“We get a lot of DMs, messages and emails from people being at a random shop and people would stop them to have a conversation about how they all like Stay Gold Pizza,” Hoang said, adding the merchandise “helped people bond.”
Eric Chan, an Ottawa-based influencer who goes by the name Ottawa Nibbles, has also noticed a growing number of young adults turning to content creation as a hobby.
“When I started around 2017, there weren’t a lot of bloggers,” Chan said. “Now there are a ton of bloggers, food bloggers and photographers. People just found their hobby and they’re kind of jumping into it.”
But Darmody has questions about the future of influencer marketing, including whether micro-influencers on Instagram are shifting from trying to sell to building communities and demonstrating more empathy after the pandemic.
“Is there less of a focus on the explicit commercial side of things that people were mybe a little more accepting of two years ago than they are today?” he asked.
Hadfield said she felt a bit awkward reaching out to small businesses that may have been struggling during the first six months of the pandemic. But over time, she said, she felt more comfortable and successfully found collaborations.
“Spreading the word of different local businesses that I personally liked during the pandemic helped other people discover them,” she said. “It’s important to support your local economy. When you purchase a product from a local business, I find that it adds value to it.”
Listen and watch Rajpreet Sahota’s walking tour of Ottawa’s top Insta-worthy restaurants, including Stay Gold Detroit-Style Pizza and Zak’s Diner.
Annamie Paul, centre, resigned on Nov. 10 amid poor election results and internal party disputes. Photo by courtesy of Rebecca Wood through Creative Commons license.
For Kayne Alleyne-Adams, 20, the Green Party of Canada represented an important voice for young people to address the issues of climate change and social justice.
Like other young Greens, he is now grappling with his place in the party following allegations of racism and transphobia within many of the party’s inner circles.
“There are a lot of party spaces that are extremely unsafe for members, especially members of colour, Jewish members and members from the LGBTQ+ community,” said Alleyne-Adams, who is Black and identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community.
In a year that saw the hottest temperatures in Canadian history, and record-breaking floods this week in B.C., the stage was set for the Greens to take command of the climate issue in the Sept. 20 federal election. However, with Parliament now set to return on Nov. 22, the Greens are arriving back in Ottawa without a leader and with a host of internal equity issues, which has many supporters wondering how the party can move forward.
Internal Green Party report details strife
On Aug. 31, an internal report detailed complaints of racism and transphobia in the party. The complaints stem from a variety of “spaces” such as campaign events and Facebook groups. Members reported the comments and remarks made by other members in these spaces to senior levels of the party, who they say failed to address them.
Some generation Z and millennial members — who represent an important source of support for the party — are reckoning with their confidence in the party’s management of discrimination.
“I can’t be part of a movement where I don’t feel as if I can bring people in … If I feel guilty bringing in a friend or bringing in a family member. I just don’t see that as a space that I want to dedicate my time to,” Alleyne-Adams said.
“And until the Green Party of Canada makes it clear that organizationally, they want to create a safer environment, it’s just not the place for me.”
Kayne Alleyne-Adams says he was initially inspired by Annamie Paul’s vision for the Green Party. He became frustrated with senior members who failed to address systemic problems of racism, transphobia, and anti-Semitism. Photo courtesy of Darcy Higgins.
Growing up as the eldest of four, raised by a single mother with disabilities, Alleyne-Adams was inspired by Annamie Paul and identified with her story as the daughter of immigrants. He felt she had a passion for integrating diverse views and youth voices into her campaign and would go on to serve as the chair of the Young Greens of Canada Council and as Paul’s debate prep coordinator.
After over a year with the Green Party, he became frustrated with the party’s senior governance in addressing problems of racism, transphobia and anti-Semitism within the party. Alleyne-Adams said he reported the incidents of racism against him to the membership review and complaints process but received no resolution.
“Oftentimes, I wouldn’t even receive as much as a reply or even an acknowledgement that they’ve received this letter in the first place,” he said.
But racism is not the only issue facing the Greens.
‘Transphobia seems to go unchecked’: B.C. Green Party candidate
The Aug. 31 internal report also describes the governance level of the party failing to address complaints of transphobia.
“I’ve just noticed that transphobia within the federal party seems to go unchecked,” said Nicola Spurling, 31, a candidate for the provincial B.C. Green Party in Coquitlam-Maillardville and a member of the federal Green Party.
Nicola Spurling says federal party leaders stayed silent and allowed transphobia to occur in the party. She ran as a candidate for the B.C. Green Party in the 2020 provincial election. Photo used by courtesy of Nicola Spurling
During the 2020 provincial election, Spurling, who is openly transgender, was harassed and doxed by a man who claimed to be a fan of author J.K. Rowling and protested at several sign-waving events for her campaign with anti-transgender signs.
Spurling said she felt supported by the B.C. Green Party following the harassment who offered to pay her legal bills and provide any support she required.
“That, to me, was really impressive to have a party that really cared about me,” she said.
Although she felt supported in the provincial party, she says trans members of the federal Greens face a significant amount of transphobia and the party has not supported them.
“If the party continues the way that it has been, sort of staying silent on these important issues… I have doubts about whether it can last,” she said.
At this time, Spurling says she is unsure whether she will renew her membership to the federal party.
‘Struggle for the soul of the party’
In the 2021 federal election, the Green Party finished with 2.3 per cent of the popular vote, down from 6.5 per cent in 2019. Former leader, Annamie Paul, finished in fourth place in her riding of Toronto Centre, prompting an internal battle over what went wrong.
Paul, who officially resigned on Nov. 10, said in her resignation speech, “there is a struggle that is going on for the soul of the party.”
Despite the decline in the national vote and internal conflict within the party, the Greens were saved from a calamitous loss in seats by Mike Morrice, who won a surprise victory in the Ontario riding of Kitchener Centre.
For Morrice, who joined the party in 2019, running for the Greens wasn’t the most politically advantageous, but he felt he needed his first choice in politics to be one he believed in.
“I wanted to start myself on a track that ensured I could stay true to who I am and focus on democracy first and foremost and give me the best chance to hold on to my integrity,” he said.
Morrice, 37, will be one of two MPs in the Green caucus and is left to pick up the pieces of a fractured party.
“Racism is systemic, and we need to be calling it out and rooting it out. And that’s an ongoing process,” he said.
Morrice is calling for the party to centre anti-racism policy in the most senior levels of government and says they need to focus on listening to racialized voices and the issues they are illuminating.
“Those are voices that the party needs to be listening to and learning from, but like I said, this is the reality of systemic racism that exists in every institution across the country,” he said.
Many of these decisions need to come from the federal council which governs the complaints and membership review process.
Maya Linsley, 19, is also grappling with her place in the party, but feels the Green Party still represents an important platform for young people.
Linsley was a volunteer for Morrice’s 2021 campaign which was the first time she got involved in politics.
Maya Linsley volunteered for Mike Morrice’s 2021 campaign. She says she was inspired by his campaign and his focus on community. She is disappointed with the senior levels of the Green Party. Photo courtesy of Maya Linsley.
Trust in new Ontario Green MP
While disappointed with how the party is handling its internal issues, Linsley said she felt inspired by Morrice’s campaign and his commitment to her community.
“When people see that their concerns are actually registering, that’s when they start caring because they really feel like they’re heard,” she said.
Linsley’s belief in the values that Morrice brings to the Greens helped her to reckon with the issues in the party.
“We trust him to represent the community, and I think a party like the Green Party, because of the way they’re set up, they bring those people forward, the people who will just represent the needs of the community, regardless of the party agenda,” she said.
The party, in her view, still has an important place in Canadian politics but needs to change.
“I think a Green Party is the thing that we really, really need,” she said. “And I wish they wouldn’t mess it up.”
For Alleyne-Adams, politics are taking the backseat for now, so he can focus on school (he’s studying sociology and creative writing at York University) and his mental health before getting involved again.
“I think there’s a necessity for parties to be inclusive, to be open, and to be willing to listen to and hear young voices,” he said.
“I don’t think the Green Party has that right now. I don’t think the Green Party has been that for a little while.”
