The Harbinger Group was engaged in mid-2025 with a clear mandate: increase NFDA’s “cherry pie” — the team’s internal shorthand for deep, meaningful coverage that positions NFDA and its spokespeople as highly credible experts, not just data points. This required a total overhaul of the earned media strategy and a new, optimized delivery process engineered to elevate the organization to a voice of authority.

Leveraging the Spokesperson Bench. The Harbinger Group’s earned media team identified early on that the fastest path to richer, more empathetic coverage was putting prepared human voices, not just written statements, directly in front of journalists. Instead of treating public relations as a transactional data-fulfillment service, we proactively pursued live interviews to drive a deeper, more nuanced narrative for the NFDA. To support this, we invested heavily in embedding with NFDA’s spokesperson team, implementing monthly collaborative office hours where spokespeople could share regional insights and personal anecdotes we could use to bring media pitches to life. We then institutionalized a suite of template briefing books and hyper-focused fact sheets, ensuring every spokesperson entered an interview feeling completely confident and strategically aligned. Reporters immediately noticed the difference, explicitly praising the accompanying fact sheets as “extremely helpful” to their tight writing timelines. This extra preparation directly translated to cleaner, sharper coverage. It kept our core points front and center and drove a steady climb in our performance, ultimately hitting an 88% message pull-through rate by early 2026, well ahead of our 75% goal.

From Reactive to Proactive. Rather than waiting for journalists to discover NFDA data on their own, our team began proactively connecting reporters with prepared spokespeople and packaging story-ready angles — from regional tailoring of the Cremation and Burial Report to exclusive trend stories like the funeral home “succession crisis.” We tightened the aperture on topics, prioritizing pitches where NFDA’s voice would add genuine depth over broad spray-and-pray outreach. 

Podcasts as a Strategic Channel. The Harbinger Group built a targeted podcast strategy, establishing an entirely new marketing pathway for NFDA. We chose this approach because traditional media formats rarely allow for the nuance required to discuss complex topics like grief etiquette or AI in funeral service. This strategy opened a brand-new pathway of content generation for NFDA. By treating each interview as a reusable asset rather than a one-time placement, we provided a fresh stream of material to support their social media, email marketing, and website channels after every spokesperson appearance.

Rapid-Response Infrastructure. Within weeks of engagement, The Harbinger Group optimized the inbound media inquiry process to be faster and more efficient. We built rapid-response kits with fact sheets for reporters, assigned spokespeople by topic area, and dramatically cut average response times. The revamped approach ensured NFDA never missed a coverage opportunity and enabled it to capitalize on the growing volume of inbound media interest.

MAT Releases Powered by Spokesperson Insight. THG developed MAT releases grounded in the personal experiences and quotes of NFDA’s spokesperson team, using feedback gathered during monthly office hours with spokespeople to guarantee every release carried authentic, human-centered storytelling rather than generic data and messaging.