Your Crisis Comms Plan is Useless

In an age of burner accounts, viral screenshots, and weaponised outrage, most reputational risk plans are built for a world that no longer exists.

May 14, 2025

A screenshot. A two-second video. A single out-of-context Slack message. That’s all it takes.

Most companies will spend more time debating tone in a press release than preparing for the first 60 seconds of a reputational flash fire. They think in press cycles. But reputation now lives in meme cycles. And no, your five-page PDF response plan won't save you.

The New Rules of Reputational Risk

Speed: Outrage travels faster than your approval chain.
Channels: X (Twitter), TikTok, Reddit—none of them respect a comms blackout.
Actors: It's not just journalists or customers anymore. It's employees, trolls, bots, whistleblowers, and your own staff.
Persistence: The internet doesn’t forget (and neither does Google).
Exposure: Risk isn’t just external—it’s embedded in your own culture, tech stack, and leadership choices.

Traditional crisis plans are:

Too slow.
Too hierarchical.
Too focused on message control.
Built for broadcast media, not participatory backlash.

You won’t always control the story. But you can avoid adding fuel to it.

Case Studies in Losing Control

Even well-resourced organisations with legal teams, PR agencies, and insurance in place can lose control of the narrative in hours—sometimes minutes. These examples aren’t just media missteps. They’re systemic failures that played out in public.

United Airlines (2017)
When a video surfaced of a passenger being forcibly removed from an overbooked flight, United’s initial response was procedural and defensive. The backlash was immediate. Within 48 hours, the airline’s market value had dropped by $1.4 billion. The damage wasn’t caused by the incident alone—but by the tone-deaf handling of it.
PwC Australia (2023)
The firm faced a national scandal when it emerged that partners had misused confidential government tax policy information for commercial gain. But what escalated the crisis was the internal Slack messages leaked afterward—revealing not just misconduct, but a dismissive internal culture. Reputational damage came not just from the breach, but from how it was internally tolerated.
Optus (2025)
In early 2025, Optus suffered a second major network outage—barely 15 months after a high-profile data breach. While the technical failure was serious, it was the public and political response to the company’s lack of communication that caused the most damage. Confused messaging, delayed updates, and absence from key media moments led to renewed questions about the company’s leadership and crisis management capability. The brand was hit harder by perception than by the outage itself.

Reputation as a Transferable Risk (But with Limits)

Reputation is one of the few business risks that’s both insurable and intensely human. That creates tension. On paper, a policy might respond. In practice, the fallout often runs deeper than any coverage can reach.

Some insurance products can help cover the immediate costs of managing a reputational crisis—typically things like external PR support, media consultants, and digital monitoring. But they don’t rebuild trust. They don’t stop key staff from leaving or customers from walking away. And they certainly don’t undo a leadership failure or cultural misstep.

Here’s what the coverage usually looks like:

What’s commonly included: Crisis consultancy, communications support, media strategy advice (usually through a pre-approved vendor panel).
What’s not included: Loss of future revenue, brand equity erosion, staff morale, or broader reputational damage outside the scope of a defined incident.

There are some useful policy triggers to be aware of:

Crisis Management extensions: Often embedded in Management Liability or Cyber policies with set sublimits and predefined response services.
D&O cover: Relevant when reputational fallout leads to regulatory scrutiny, shareholder action, or allegations of governance failure.
Reputational Harm clauses: Occasionally available in bespoke placements, but highly variable in scope and activation thresholds.

None of these are silver bullets. They’re useful tools, but they only work well when backed by genuine preparation and internal alignment.

What Modern Risk Leaders Do Differently

When reputation is on the line, the worst response is indecision. Modern risk leaders understand that trust is lost in seconds and rebuilt in months—if at all. So they prepare not just to respond, but to respond well.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Designate pre-approved crisis teams with delegated authority
Don’t rely on comms, legal, and execs to align in the moment. Assign a cross-functional team, give them parameters, and empower them to act without waiting for consensus. Decision latency is often more damaging than the incident itself.
Run scenario simulations—not just tabletop exercises
Most organisations do one symbolic crisis drill a year. Modern teams run realistic simulations that include messy variables: misinformation, employee leaks, conflicting messages, and social backlash. The goal here is to build muscle memory.
Build rapid-response templates focused on tone, not just facts
You don’t need a perfect statement. You need a fast, human one. Create draftable frameworks that allow your team to acknowledge the issue, show empathy, and communicate early—even before all the details are known.
Treat employees like stakeholders, not liabilities
Employees are often the first to speak, post, or leak. If they trust the organisation, they become your advocates. If they don’t, they become your critics. Internal comms isn’t a soft skill—it’s a frontline risk control.
Align insurance with operational readiness
Insurance should be part of the plan, not a side conversation. That means understanding who can trigger cover, how quickly support can be deployed, and which vendors are pre-approved. Risk transfer is only useful if it activates in time to matter.

The 3 Pillars of Modern Crisis Response

Signal
Spot it early. Use social listening tools, employee feedback loops, and internal escalation channels. Don’t rely on gut instinct or media alerts.
Speed
Empower response teams to act without unnecessary sign-offs. Reputational damage compounds with delay.
Sincerity
Speak like a human. Avoid legalese and corporate platitudes. In a trust crisis, tone is the message.

Reputation Is a Systems Issue

Reputation isn’t just shaped by what you say when things go wrong. It’s shaped by how you operate when things are going right.

A strong comms team can’t paper over a weak culture. Slick messaging can’t substitute for sound ethics. And no amount of reputation management will fix leadership that’s out of step with employees, customers, or the community.

That’s why reputational risk is best understood as a systems issue, not a communications issue. It’s the result of how your organisation makes decisions, lives its values, and responds under pressure. If there’s a gap between what you say and what you do, that gap becomes the story.

Leaders who ignore that reality often find themselves managing consequences, not risks.

So, What’s the Risk Transfer Strategy?

Insurance can be a powerful part of your reputation strategy—but only if it’s integrated thoughtfully into your broader response plan.

Think of it less as a shield and more as scaffolding. It won’t stop the blow, but it can help you stabilise and respond faster.

Don’t just buy cover—understand how it activates.
Who can trigger it? What vendors are pre-approved? What qualifies as a “crisis”? These details matter when minutes count.
Know your first call.
Have your crisis advisors locked in and briefed. Know who you’re leaning on—PR, legal, insurers—before the headlines hit.
Go beyond the policy schedule.
Insist on insurers who understand your real risk exposures—not just your industry label or headcount. The quality of advice and alignment can make the difference between a useful response and a generic one.

Used well, insurance is a tactical enabler. It gives your team space to focus on what matters most: restoring trust, staying visible, and leading through the storm.

Conclusion

Reputation isn’t something you control. It’s something you earn—and hold onto by being consistent when things go wrong.

In a crisis, people don’t look for polish. They look for clarity. They want to know who’s in charge, whether the response is real, and if the organisation actually stands behind what it says.

That kind of response doesn’t come from a playbook. It comes from preparation. From a leadership team that trusts each other. From systems that support quick decisions. From a culture where people raise their hand when something feels off.

Insurance can help. But it works best when it’s part of the plan, not the fallback. The real work starts well before the headlines.

The teams that do this well aren’t trying to control the narrative. They’re focused on showing up early, acting with integrity, and making decisions they can stand by—online and off.

Disclaimer: This post is for general informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal or financial advice. Always consult qualified professionals for guidance tailored to your specific situation.