A Not-So-Corporate #ToryTakeover
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A Not-So-Corporate #ToryTakeover

The mayor took over the Toronto Sun's Twitter account to answer questions. Not everything went according to plan.

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If there’s one thing politicians strive for in 2015, it’s to create just the right Twitter presence. Not everyone can be a Twitter (and real-life) superstar like U.S. Senator Cory Booker, but you want the right mix of tweets that humanize a politician, share their ideas and priorities, and provide a useful service while meeting the brand image of the individual.

In an effort to reach out to constituents, today John Tory “took over,” the Toronto Sun’s Twitter account, and answered questions from readers. There were questions about affordable housing, transit, and whether WrestleMania could come back to Toronto. (Sure, says Tory, if the WWE would like to.)

But Twitter users quickly noticed something was wrong. The Sun replaced their thumbnail avatar photo with a photo of Tory, which made it look as though their old tweets―and there are many―came from him.

Some of those, while fun, don’t exactly fit the John Tory brand. Thus, the #ToryTakeover was born.

John Tory can be a funny guy, but in a dinner-party-joke kind of way. However, tweets about Left Shark aren’t exactly his jam.

Screen shot 2015 03 05 at 1 59 00 PM

John Tory is also the kind of guy to play it safe. He’s not risque and he doesn’t offend people―he comes across as basically what he is, the type of “safe” person you might expect to serve on a company’s board of directors. The Sun, well, they don’t quite have John Tory’s sensibility.

Then there’s the politics of Tory and the Sun. Tory, as some Sun columnists frequently point out, is a different kind of conservative than the paper’s editorial stance. He’s less reactionary when it comes to social and cultural issues, but competing against the Sun on that metric is a pretty low bar. But as these tweets show, their politics don’t always align.

In spite of all those differences, the Twitter Q + A session was more or less a lighthearted thing, and we’re all friends at the end of the day.

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