Trinity Western University, a small Christian university located in British Columbia, found itself preparing for a high profile court case in which it would fight for its core values. It appeared before the Supreme Court to argue that it should be able to open a law school. However, its opponents falsely argued that its distinctly Christian approach and community covenant are discriminatory. Yellow Line Digital stepped in with a comprehensive strategy to ensure that TWU’s Supreme Court win would be accompanied by a win in the court of public opinion in the digital sphere.
Our Work
We conducted a social media audit on competitor performance, messaging and overall sentiment. Drawing on key insights, our team created a digital “War Room” communications plan so that all core audiences would receive the university’s framing of the case first and most often, using a combination of paid promotion, earned media, shared posts, and owned content.
In the weeks leading up to the case, YLD performed rigorous testing of messaging using a variety of content types, created and pushed traffic to a website as a central resource hub for all audiences, and closely monitored university and adversary channels to ensure that our team had a firm understanding of the current conversation going into oral arguments.
On the day of oral arguments, YLD set a Rapid Response team in place throughout the day to conduct rolling phone calls to supporters, publish targeted videos and proactive posts, closely monitor the university’s pages, adversary pages, and the broader social media conversation, respond to commenters with pre-approved response copy, and amplify positive breaking coverage with paid promotion of article links on social media.
The Results
- During the week of the case, the posts reached 372,251 people and achieved 147,900 Twitter impressions, and the videos earned 117,219 views.
- The Facebook content earned strongly positive reactions and while the Twitter sentiment was initially mixed, it trended positively over time. We found the pre-approved response copy very helpful in disarming angry people by showing that our client was open to dialogue.
- Lastly, we saw 1,271 Tweets and Instagram posts using the campaign hashtag; 7 of the top 10 posts were either ours or favorable to us!
As part of our work to promote Truth, Beauty, and Goodness on digital, Yellow Line Digital is proud to have served Trinity Western University in fighting for its Christian values and the establishment of its proposed law school. Have a digital goal in mind? Chat with our VP of Strategy & Growth, Gabe!
