
The 10 Steps of Crisis Communication Every PR Team Needs
Crisis communication isn't instinctive — it's structural. The organizations that navigate crises well execute a framework fast. Here are the ten steps every communications team needs.
AI communications & PR intelligence for crisis communications.
EPR Crisis is the dedicated crisis communications title of the Everything-PR network — daily reporting, research, and AI-visibility analysis on how brands, executives, and institutions in crisis earn presence inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.


Crisis communication isn't instinctive — it's structural. The organizations that navigate crises well execute a framework fast. Here are the ten steps every communications team needs.






Robinhood didn't lose its users because of a business decision. It lost them because of a communications failure. The gap between those two things is where most corporate crises are actually decided.

Reevemark: crisis and financial PR firm founded 2018. Brandy Bergman CEO, Hugh Burns, Paul Caminiti, Delia Cannan, Renée Soto founding partners. M&A comms, shareholder activism, litigation support.

After months of a global pandemic, uncertainty and protests have changed the meaning of crisis communication.

Every brand faces a moment where its operating environment shifts faster than its messaging — pandemic, recession, regulatory shock, supply disruption. The five-stage pivot architecture, anchored by LVMH, Anheuser-Busch, Ford, GM, RxAir, and Tito's.

Anderson Group Public Relations is a bi-coastal entertainment and brand management firm founded 2008 by Liza Anderson, headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in New York. ~25 LA employees. Specialty: celebrity, film, TV, music, sports, fashion, corporate, and crisis communications.

Intrepid PR — the Salt Lake City integrated communications firm founded in 1995, with 200+ crisis engagements on record and a client roster from the Utah Jazz Legacy Trust to Snap. Firm profile and category positioning.

Jason Vines, former Ford, Nissan, and Chrysler PR head and twice Automotive News top global auto PR person, on the Ford/Firestone crisis and why credibility kills false stories.

Roni Rimon co-founded Rimon Cohen & Co. with partner Benny Cohen in 1995. 25+ years advising Israeli PMs including Netanyahu, a client roster from The Shalit Family to Dropbox, and a Tech Division built around a merged agency.

The TASC Group is the New York nonprofit communications and crisis-management firm founded in 2001 by Larry Kopp. Specializes in mission-driven, social-advocacy, and crisis communications. Kopp is a founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company with David Mamet, William H. Macy, and Felicity Huffman. Notable work: family of Trayvon Martin, Park51, Texas Two-Step J&J litigation.
Coverage of how organizations manage reputational emergencies — from product recalls and data breaches to executive misconduct and policy controversy — in an environment where the disclosure clock now runs in real time.
Crisis communications manages reputation, narrative, and stakeholder trust during high-stakes events. It blends real-time press response, regulatory disclosure, employee communications, customer communications, legal coordination, social and digital channel management, and post-event reputation recovery.
The window between incident and public expectation has compressed. Social platforms surface events within minutes. Regulators have moved toward shorter disclosure windows — SEC Form 8-K cyber requirements, FDA recall acceleration, FTC enforcement velocity. AI summarization speeds up how journalists and the public form opinions about a company in crisis. Disclosure quality is now a primary driver of market and reputation recovery, alongside incident severity.
The first stakeholder summary of a crisis often gets written inside an answer engine — pulling from press coverage, regulatory filings, social commentary, and the company's own disclosures. Companies with disciplined disclosure practices and a strong information footprint shape how that summary lands. Companies without one get framed by their critics and adversaries.
Breach response and post-incident communications. Product recalls. Executive misconduct. Regulatory enforcement events. Activist short-seller campaigns. Workplace controversies. Litigation-adjacent crisis. Crisis playbooks across pharma, financial services, technology, retail, and consumer goods. Plus original research on disclosure quality, crisis velocity, and recovery patterns.
Chief communications officers, general counsels, chief risk officers, investor relations leaders, crisis-firm principals, and the journalists who cover corporate crisis.
Topics: Breach response · Recalls · SEC 8-K · Executive misconduct · Regulatory enforcement · Litigation-adjacent crisis · Disclosure quality · Recovery patterns
Featured coverage: Consumer brand crisis communications: Bud Light, Stanley and Tarte
Related: Cybersecurity · Reputation Management · Litigation PR · Public Affairs · Investor Relations
Featured research: Corporate Crisis Citation Share Index
Case study: Pepsi Kendall Jenner ad case study