The AGCO’s changing public profile

The AGCO places a priority on digital and enhanced communications to inform and engage with audiences, based on its “Digital by Default” approach. Over this past year, under the spotlight of significant interest in the regulation of recreational cannabis, the AGCO had a unique opportunity to reinforce its communications commitment of sustaining the agency’s reputation by expanding its website content, amplifying its social media presence, proactively engaging with media and taking a direct communication approach with licensees.

AGCO website

The AGCO website had more than 1.2 million views in 2020–2021 by 667,000 users. Overall traffic to the site was 14% lower than the previous fiscal year. This is likely due to the spike in interest seen in 2019– 2020 due to the opening of cannabis stores, as well as the economic effects of COVID-19 in 2020–2021. Sixteen new videos were added in 2020–2021 for a total of 61 videos available on the AGCO’s Vimeo page or via the website. These videos generated a total of 8,500 views during the fiscal year, which is down from 34,000 views the previous year. This decrease can be attributed to the significant interest the cannabis industry received the previous year.

Social media

The AGCO continued to increase the reach of its regulatory announcements and build its social media communities and online engagement through its English and French Twitter accounts, @Ont_AGCO, @Ont_CAJO, @AGCO_Racing and @CAJO_Courses. There were 734 new followers in 2020–2021, for a total of 4,346 followers (a 20% year/year increase). A total of 4,297 tweets were sent during this fiscal year, with 2,750 engagements (retweets, replies, and likes) from users. Twitter and other social media platforms continue to be an important part of the AGCO’s communications strategy, and increasing the rate of follower growth remains a key objective.

Email distribution list

As part of its continual efforts to provide support during the COVID-19 pandemic, the AGCO focused its external email campaigns primarily on existing licensees and stakeholders, by informing them of the impacts of government and public health measures on their businesses. In 2020–2021, the AGCO sent over 372,000 emails during 95 direct email campaigns (in both official languages) to licensee and stakeholder groups across all regulated lines of business. This included the launch of the AGCO’s electronic Lottery Line and Race Line newsletters. The average email open rate of 65% exceeds industry standards.

AGCO media requests

Working with media outlets to share information continued to be a priority over the year.

TABLE 1: Media requests by month

¹ First Cannabis stores opening. ² Lottery draw for Second Allocation of stores