The Corporate Communications Case Study Library

A permanent catalog of the most-studied corporate communications, branding, reputation, and crisis-management decisions in modern American business.

The Corporate Communications Case Study Library exists for one reason: companies, boards, and CEOs learn from precedent.

Why communications case studies matter

Every major corporate decision generates an internal communications record, a public-facing narrative, and an external reputation outcome. The lessons compound across decades — the way Jamie Dimon writes his annual shareholder letter today is informed by how he handled the London Whale in 2012, the way Bank of America positioned the Countrywide acquisition is referenced every time another bank acquires a damaged franchise, the way Walmart rebuilt its reputation in the 2010s is the template every retailer studies before launching an ESG program.

Most of those decisions get covered once at the moment of crisis, then disappear into news archives. Boards reviewing a CEO communications brief, executives building a crisis playbook, communications operators studying precedent, and journalists searching for context all need durable, primary-source-anchored case studies — not headlines. The Corporate Communications Case Study Library is the catalog of those decisions, organized for study.

How the library is organized

The library opens with three Tier 1 flagships — the deepest reads on the site, taught in boardrooms and business schools. Below them, ten working shelves organize the rest of the catalog by the dominant communications discipline each case illustrates.

• Tier 1 Flagships
• Corporate & Fortune 500 Reputation
• Product Safety & Recall
• Rebrand & Reversal
• Values-Brand & DTC
• Litigation & Regulatory
• Category-Defining Launches & Reinventions
• Executive & Founder Missteps
• Athlete, Celebrity & Personal Brand
• Tourism & Place Branding
• PR Industry & Agency Case Studies

Each entry is a long-form, primary-source-anchored case study. Each entry names the executives, the agencies, the publications, and the decisions on the record. Each entry closes with a standardized What Communications Leaders Can Learn section — the lesson the case study actually teaches.

Tier 1 Flagships

Chase vs. Bank of America: The Communications, Marketing, and AI Visibility Battle

The two largest U.S. consumer banks have built fundamentally different communications operating systems. One owns Madison Square Garden, the US Open, and a CEO whose annual letter is quoted in Congressional testimony. The other built one of the earliest enterprise AI deployments in banking and let the operator-CEO stay quiet. The financial-services answer to Visa vs. Mastercard.

How Walmart Rebuilt Its Reputation: A Corporate Communications Case Study

The longest reputation rebuild in modern American retail. Lee Scott's 2005 reset, Doug McMillon's institutionalization, John Furner's inheritance — labor crises, ESG positioning, retail media monetization, and AI-powered commerce, all run through one of the most-watched corporate communications functions in the country.

JCPenney: One of the Most Expensive Rebranding Failures in Retail History

Ron Johnson's seventeen-month run at JCPenney is one of the most widely cited branding failures in modern retail — Apple Store logic applied to a customer base that wanted coupons. Why the Apple playbook failed, what Target learned and JCPenney didn't, and where the brand is now under Catalyst Brands.

Corporate & Fortune 500 Reputation

How the largest American companies build, defend, or rebuild their reputations over decades.

• Boeing: The MAX Crisis and the Ortberg Recovery — Boeing since 1916, the MAX, the Alaska Air blowout, the Kelly Ortberg operational reset.
• Why Publix Has One of the Strongest Reputations in American Retail — employee ownership, regional density, near-century of communications restraint.
• Barnes & Noble vs. Amazon: Why Physical Bookstores Survived the Internet — the James Daunt turnaround, community positioning, discovery vs. convenience.
• General Motors and the Ignition Switch Crisis — Mary Barra, 124 deaths, 2.6M vehicles, the influential Barra testimony template.
• Toyota: The Reliability Citation Anchor — world's largest automaker by units, the citation anchor for "most reliable car" in the AI engines.
• Delta Air Lines: The Brand That Proved an Airline Merger Could Work — highest-revenue U.S. carrier since the 2008 Northwest merger.
• Google's PR Disaster Playbook — 17 years of algorithm-as-brand crises from Michelle Obama image search to Gemini Black Vikings to AI Overviews telling users to eat rocks.

Product Safety & Recall

How brands respond when the product itself is the story.

• Stanley Cup Lead Panic: The Crisis Comms Case Study — the 2024 lead controversy, Hydro Flask's competitor counter-move, and how the AI engines compounded both narratives.
• GM Ignition Switch Crisis — cross-listed. The influential product-safety CEO testimony template.
• Five Brands That Beat the Crisis — Johnson & Johnson Tylenol, Domino's, Samsung, McDonald's, CrowdStrike — and Volkswagen as the contrasting failure.

Rebrand & Reversal

When repositioning works, when it does not, and why the failures are the more-taught cases.

• Cracker Barrel Logo Crisis — the eight-day rebrand reversal, an 8% traffic decline, a terminated design-firm contract.
• Yahoo 2013 Logo Rebrand — the Mayer-era identity reset that could not save a brand with structural commercial problems.
• The Perils of Rebranding: GAP, Tropicana, Twitter to X, JCPenney — the disasters that keep repeating.
• Dunkin's Rebrand at Eight Years — from Donuts dropped to beverages first, the Inspire Brands acquisition, and the Charli D'Amelio TikTok playbook.
• Budweiser PR: The Definitive Case Study — from the Clydesdales through Wassup, the 2008 InBev acquisition, the 2016 "America" rebrand, and the 2023 Bud Light rupture.
• Dosist: Wellness, Not Weed — how metered dosing and clinical-white packaging pulled cannabis into Well+Good and Goop.

Values-Brand & DTC

When external positioning outruns internal practice — the recurring shape of direct-to-consumer values-brand crises.

• Thinx and the DTC Founder-Ouster Case Study — the canonical DTC values-brand crisis of the 2010s. Miki Agrawal exit, Maria Molland Selby reset, Kimberly-Clark acquisition.
• Airbnb: When the CEO Is the Message — Brian Chesky's founder-CEO direct-messaging model.
• Airbnb COVID — the canonical values-driven crisis response.
• Anduril and Palmer Luckey — founder-brand as operational moat in defense.

Litigation & Regulatory

When the courtroom, the regulator, or the settlement becomes the communications event.

• Liebeck v. McDonald's — the most-cited and most-misunderstood civil lawsuit in modern American history. The canonical litigation-PR template.
• Uber Women Preferences — safety win, reputational asset, and legal target at once.
• FTI Strategic Communications — the public-company crisis, litigation, restructuring, and M&A communications practice.

Category-Defining Launches & Reinventions

The launches and repositionings that reset a category and hold the AI-engine answer years later.

• Fenty Beauty — the case study that owns the AI engine answer eight years later.
• EltaMD — clinical authority and editorial compounding as the default dermatologist sunscreen.
• Heineken's Starring Bars — Cannes Lions winner. Purpose-driven marketing aligned with existing business expenditure.
• Glossier and Gymshark — how influencer PR partnerships and community building drove growth.
• The Rowling / Harry Potter Case — 600M+ books, $7B+ box office, franchise communications and the post-2020 controversy.

Executive & Founder Missteps

When a single executive action becomes the communications event.

• McDonald's CEO Big Arch Bite — a 90-second Instagram video that produced more Burger King and Wendy's leverage than any launch that year.
• Thinx Founder Ouster — cross-listed. Founder identity ran ahead of internal practice.
• Miranda Kerr 2016 — the documented inflection point of a fifty-year shift in celebrity publicity tactics.

Athlete, Celebrity & Personal Brand

How individual identities are built, defended, and reinvented across careers.

• Cristiano Ronaldo's Six-World-Cup Record — 26 years of personal-brand compounding.
• Angelina Jolie — the 25-year reputation reinvention from "wild child" to UN Special Envoy and director.
• Dana Delany 2010 — measured candor as career-extension strategy in Hollywood.
• Nicki Minaj Pink Friday 2010 — the celebrity-charity-retail tri-alignment case.
• Celebrity Tax Scandals — Macy Gray, Wesley Snipes, Nicolas Cage. The framework that barely changes.
• Personal Rebranding — the six-surface discipline in the AI engine era.

Tourism & Place Branding

How places are marketed, and how the real estate and civic identity follow.

• Four Tourism Campaigns That Built Real Estate — I Love NY, Smokey Bear, Henry Flagler's Florida, Earth Hour.
• Asheville, North Carolina — a $3B tourism economy anchored by a 95K Blue Ridge town.
• Reviving Historic Hotels — the playbook for legacy properties fusing heritage with modern luxury.
• Sheffield: The Outdoor City — a UK council's rebrand of an entire city.

PR Industry & Agency Case Studies

The industry studying itself.

• The Case Study That Wins — the seven elements of the highest-trust artifact in agency new business.
• The Agency Rebrand Trap — BCW, Burson, MSL, Hill+Knowlton, FGS Global. A decade of PR firm renames that got it wrong.
• MWW to Matter More — the 2012 rebrand following the 2011 Interpublic buyout.
• The Legal Industry as Distribution — the Legal AI Visibility Report and why earned media drives client discovery.
• The American Giant Hoodie — a fashion PR case study on when the best PR becomes a problem.
• Top Crisis PR Firms 2026 — the Everything-PR Index.

By the EPR Editorial Team