Honoring the Life of a Christian Leader
What steps can an organization take to help ensure its future amid an unforeseen leadership transition?
They establish an expedited legacy plan with a trusted communications agency to create stability, secure the organization's future, uphold its core principles and honor the leader’s life in ministry.
The Challenge
An influential Christian figure and the leader of a global organization passed away, and a week prior to his homegoing, his team asked Guardian to help steward the moment of worldwide exposure. They wanted both to emphasize the continued work of his namesake organization and to help communicate critical information around memorial events. Our prior experience handling legacy projects for other faith leaders enabled us to respond immediately, starting with the creation and implementation of plans that would typically take months or years to develop. With only a few days to gather and organize information and strategize communication, we worked alongside core members of the organization’s team to expedite planning needed to announce the passing.
The PROCESS
We developed an implementation plan that served as a guide for the actions taken immediately following the leader’s death, and offered general support through twice-daily check-in calls, media monitoring, phone and radio scripts, and other essential tasks.
Our media relations plan prioritized the resources most helpful to reporters, including media notices, statements from organizational leaders and backgrounders. We also worked with the organization to acquire multimedia assets to illustrate their founder’s global impact. As a result, we were able to efficiently serve the media with information that helped shape the narrative of this individual’s legacy and the ministry’s continuing work. We created a crisis escalation plan that equipped the organization’s social media team with a strategy to handle any potential online criticism or negative activity. In addition, we provided perspective on several memorial materials, including the obituary, bio, timeline of life and accomplishments, updated website information, and social media posts.
The PROCESs
Our multifaceted public relations efforts inspired hundreds of views and posts. The cumulative efforts of the legacy project garnered more than 1,500 news stories and 2.35 billion potential impressions across major daily newspapers, prominent magazines and news websites, and rebroadcasts of the memorial service through such outlets as CNN, Associated Press, CBN News Channel and Fox News Channel. On social media, posts and conversations in 94 countries generated a reach of 2.45 billion.