Who wants to buy a sub? Why South Korea’s Hanwha is advertising around Ottawa

OTTAWA — Ottawa residents and out-of-town travellers may have puzzled recently over a wave of ads in the downtown from a company trying to sell them submarines.

Not the six-inch sandwich kind, either, but the sort of 300-foot submersible you’d be hard-pressed to squeeze into your garage.

The federal government is in the market for a new fleet of submarines. It winnowed the field of bidders for the multi-billion-dollar procurement contract down to South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean and German firm ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems this past fall.

Over the past few months, Hanwha ads promoting its KSS-III submarine have been popping up all over Ottawa — on billboards, on the backs of city buses and at the Ottawa airport — part of the shipbuilder’s efforts to make itself a household name in the nation’s capital.

Digital versions are being pushed to viewers of streaming services and social media videos.

The orange-hued ads tout the Hanwha sub as the “best economic plan for Canada” and promise fast delivery and maintenance services in this country.

A video on Hanwha’s YouTube channel shows the scale of the KSS-III Batch II subs in comparison to familiar Canadian venues — the ice at Montreal’s Bell Centre, for example, or the baseball diamond in Toronto’s Rogers Centre.

Prospectus Associates is handling Hanwha’s public relations in Canada. The firm’s senior partner Keelan Green wouldn’t share the extent or cost of Hanwha’s ad campaign in a statement issued to The Canadian Press.

He did say the goal is to put Hanwha in the same league as Samsung, LG and Hyundai — South Korean brands that are widely known in Canada.

“The Canadian Patrol Submarine Project will be one of Canada’s largest procurements ever, so we want Canadians to know about Hanwha and understand that the company is one of the largest and most advanced shipbuilders in the world,” Green said.

Marketing and defence experts who spoke to The Canadian Press say Hanwha’s ads are unusual but not unprecedented — and could be an effect of a fast-changing landscape for military procurement and advertising in Canada.

“It’s less about selling a specific product and more about shaping a particular perception, a public imagination, normalizing military tech as necessary,” said Markus Giesler, marketing professor at York University’s Schulich School of Business.

Hanwha isn’t the only company advertising military tech in Ottawa.

In late 2025, Sweden’s Saab posted a banner ad near Parliament Hill showcasing its GlobalEye surveillance aircraft — a joint project with Montreal’s Bombardier — and what it called “Swedish innovation” in a “Canadian aircraft.”

At the same time, Halifax’s own Irving Shipbuilding ran a billboard nearby promoting its role in building the River-class destroyer. The first of those warships is set for delivery in the early 2030s.

Philippe Lagasse, a Carleton University professor who studies defence policy, said he’s seen this kind of advertising before, particularly in connection with the original F-35 fighter jet procurement.

He said street-level marketing can help make a brand front-of-mind in a procurement competition like this, particularly if it promises a commitment to Canada’s economy.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and his cabinet have made it clear that the choice between Hanwha and TKMS will come down in part to which company delivers the greatest economic benefits for Canada — potentially in the form of domestic job creation or maintenance contracts.

Lagasse said that “atmosphere” can have an impact on major defence spending decisions and marketing like this can help influence the general attitude toward a company.

“If you have a sufficient number of people buying into that or repeating it … it eventually does percolate up to decision-makers. And decision-makers obviously themselves are also one of the main targets for this type of advertising,” he said.

The federal government is looking to replace the Royal Canadian Navy’s four Victoria-class submarines with a fleet of up to 12 modern vessels starting in 2035. Ottawa is racing against the clock to replace the aging vessels and has committed to awarding the contract before 2028.

Lagasse said the accelerated timeline for the sub contract lends itself to an ad blitz.

The Canadian Press reached out to TKMS for comment on Hanwha’s ad campaign, and to ask about the German firm’s own marketing strategy, but did not receive a response. Germany’s defence minister was in Ottawa in October as part of a charm offensive promoting the TKMS subs.

Carney visited the Hanwha and TKMS shipyards as part of his official trips to Germany and South Korea last year.

Shortly after the spring election in 2025, Carney ramped up Canada’s defence spending commitments in a bid to rapidly meet NATO targets. He recently signalled plans to play a greater role in transatlantic security, reinforcing the need for a modern fleet of submarines that can withstand the conditions below Arctic ice.

Those commitments have opened up opportunities for defence contractors — and ad companies — worth billions of dollars, said David Soberman, marketing professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

“That’s a pretty juicy nut that a lot of companies would like to have a piece of,” Soberman said.

Soberman said in highly technical fields like defence, marketing — the emotional play — can have an influence.

While National Defence officials can explain the pros and cons of various products from a military perspective, he said, it’s the politicians who make the decision at the end of the day — and have to explain that decision to voters.

“Should it be only based on cost? Should it based on the ability that the company has to service the equipment here in Canada? Should it be the number of people that they employ in manufacturing the products?” Soberman said.

“These are all factors that don’t necessarily affect how the equipment performs, but they certainly factor into the decision.”

Giesler said public-facing defence marketing serves to normalize conversations about military applications when high-profile spending decisions are on the horizon.

He said these advertising campaigns suggest Canada could be on the verge of returning to a “Cold War-like social public” — to a time when dinner table conversations were dominated by talk of nuclear weapons or aerospace technology.

“The goal here is to make it discussable again, more acceptable, and almost inevitable … to have these conversations about defence spending,” he said.

“It’s interesting and fascinating and a bit scary to see this all having a comeback.”

Soberman said it’s too soon to call Hanwha’s campaign the start of a trend. But he said he would not be surprised to see similar public-facing ads pop up in Ottawa and shipbuilding cities such as Halifax.

“It’s gonna be interesting to keep our eye out to see whether other military manufacturers in Canada start putting ads in the … gangways when you come off the plane in Ottawa,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 17, 2026.

Craig Lord, The Canadian Press