The Crisis Communications Citation Share Index 2026

A note on methodology, up front.

This is a directional modeling study of how five AI engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — surface and rank crisis communications firms as of May 2026.

The methodology combines three inputs: systematic analysis of the training-corpus layer that feeds each engine (Wikipedia, Harvard Business Review, PRovoke/Holmes Report, PRWeek, O'Dwyer's, Forbes, WSJ, NYT, FT, Bloomberg, Reuters, Law360, LinkedIn, Reddit r/PublicRelations, The Hollywood Reporter, named-case crisis case studies, business-school casebooks); observed citation patterns across retrieval outputs; and source-weight modeling calibrated to each engine's retrieval architecture.

Per-query citation share fluctuates as engines re-rank. The corpus-weighted pattern across a 62-prompt set is stable — and that pattern, not single-query results, determines firm visibility over months and years. This study models that pattern.

Citation Share figures are directional estimates. Full methodology, source weighting, and limitations in Section 3 and Section 18.

1. Executive Summary

Crisis selection has moved. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews now answer "best crisis communications firm," "who handles crisis for [company]," "Joele Frank vs Sard Verbinnen," and "best PR firm for product recall" with confident, sourced, ranked recommendations.

Those answers reflect modeled Citation Share — which firms the engines surface, in what positions, with what supporting context.

This study estimates Citation Share across 25 crisis communications firms, 5 AI engines, and 62 buyer-intent prompts.

Seven modeled findings.

1. Edelman dominates general crisis Citation Share — but the moat is shallowest at the top of the leaderboard. Edelman is the default first answer for "best crisis PR firm" prompts across every engine. The drop from #1 to #2 is the smallest gap inside the top 10. Specialist firms beat the generalist on use-case prompts.

2. Joele Frank is the single most over-cited firm relative to revenue and headcount in the study. On Wall Street, M&A, activist defense, and proxy-fight prompts, Joele Frank citations appear at near-monopoly rates. The firm's named-partner founder visibility and WSJ/Bloomberg/FT citation density combine into a structural advantage no peer has replicated.

3. Sitrick And Company carries the strongest founder citation surface in the field. Michael Sitrick's personal Citation Share materially exceeds Sitrick And Company's institutional Citation Share. The April 2026 founder buyback re-anchored Sitrick at the center of every Hollywood and litigation crisis prompt.

4. The post-merger holding companies under-cite their scale. FGS Global (Finsbury + Glover Park + Hering Schuppener merger, KKR-owned) and BCW carry materially lower Citation Share than their billings or headcount would predict. The corpus has not yet re-anchored to the merged identities.

5. Specialist firms beat the giants on every use-case prompt. For Wall Street crisis: Joele Frank, Sard Verbinnen, Brunswick. For Hollywood: Sitrick, Polaris. For restructuring: Lambert & Co, Sard Verbinnen. For litigation PR: Goldin Solutions, Stone Maple, Levick. The corpus rewards depth of specialty over network scale.

6. CEO and named-partner citation surface compounds firm citation surface at higher rates in crisis than in any other communications discipline. Michael Sitrick, Joele Frank, George Sard, Steve Sadove, Richard Levick, Robert Dilenschneider — each functions as a personal citation anchor that pulls firm citations behind it.

7. AI Communications-era specialists are emerging on rising prompt categories. 5W AI Communications, Reputation Lab, and a handful of firms positioning around AI-engine crisis surface management are gaining Citation Share on prompts that did not exist in the corpus two years ago — "how to defend reputation in AI engines," "crisis comms for ChatGPT citations," "AI Visibility crisis response."

The crisis communications firms that win the next decade are not the largest networks. They are the firms the chatbox names first when a general counsel, CEO, or board chair asks who handles the specific crisis in front of them.

2. Why This Matters to General Counsel, CEOs, and Communications Leaders

Crisis firm selection has moved. A growing share of crisis-firm shortlists now begin inside an AI engine. The opening consideration set — the four firms the board chair reads in the first call after the crisis breaks — is increasingly the list the chatbox produces.

The list is not random. AI engines draw on a corpus weighted toward Wikipedia firm pages, Harvard Business Review case studies, PRovoke/Holmes Report rankings, O'Dwyer's category rankings, named-case crisis coverage in major financial press, and the personal-authority surface of named partners. Crisis firms have meaningful exposure across all of these — and very little of it is currently managed as a unified citation surface.

Five questions every crisis communications firm leader should be able to answer in 2026.

• What is our modeled Citation Share across the top 60 buyer-intent prompts in the discipline — and how does it compare to our direct competitive set?
• Which sources are shaping our citation context — HBR cases, O'Dwyer's rankings, named-case crisis coverage, named-partner editorial, PRWeek coverage, regulatory action context?
• Does our founder, managing partner, or signature practice leader surface as a personal citation anchor — or do we rely on firm name alone?
• How does our Citation Share shift on Wall Street-framed prompts vs. Hollywood-framed prompts vs. regulatory-framed prompts?
• What is our exposure to active controversy citations (failed cases, public-record litigation, client-side controversy that contaminates the firm citation surface), persistent negative framings, and latent risk from absence?

If those questions feel new, they are. They will not be new in 2027.

3. Methodology, Modeling Note & Sample Prompts

Engines modeled: ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Perplexity, Gemini (Google), Google AI Overviews.

Universe: 25 crisis communications firms selected across global networks, US-headquartered independents, financial/M&A specialists, litigation PR specialists, Hollywood crisis firms, and emerging AI-era specialists (full list in Section 18).

Prompt set: 62 buyer-intent prompts across 7 sub-categories.

Modeling approach. Three calibrated inputs feed the model. (1) systematic analysis of the training-data layer that feeds each engine — Wikipedia firm and crisis-case pages, Harvard Business Review case studies, PRovoke/Holmes Report editorial and rankings, PRWeek coverage, O'Dwyer's category rankings, Forbes practitioner profiles, WSJ and Bloomberg M&A crisis coverage, NYT and NYT DealBook coverage, FT corporate crisis coverage, Reuters, Law360 litigation PR coverage, The Hollywood Reporter, LinkedIn founder and partner content, Reddit r/PublicRelations (limited weight), trade-press award coverage; (2) observed citation patterns across answer engines as of May 2026; and (3) source-weight calibration tuned to each engine's retrieval architecture.

Why directional is the right read. Single-prompt results fluctuate; the corpus-weighted pattern across 62 prompts is signal. That signal — not the single query — determines firm visibility across the months and years a buyer takes to build a crisis-firm shortlist.

Sample prompts and modeled engine behavior.

#	Prompt	Firms That Appear To Surface First	Most Notable Engine Variance
1	Best crisis communications firm	Edelman, Joele Frank, Sitrick, Sard Verbinnen, Brunswick	Universal across engines
2	Best crisis PR firm Wall Street	Joele Frank, Sard Verbinnen, Brunswick, Kekst CNC, FGS	Joele Frank dominates all five
3	Best crisis PR firm Hollywood	Sitrick, Polaris, 42West (not in set), Sunshine Sachs (not in set)	Sitrick dominates ChatGPT and Claude
4	PR firm that handled Tylenol J&J	Burson-Marsteller historical citation; modern J&J in-house	Universal Tylenol case anchor
5	PR firm for hostile takeover	Joele Frank, Sard Verbinnen, MacKenzie Partners	Perplexity surfaces proxy-advisor context
6	Best M&A communications firm	Joele Frank, Sard Verbinnen, Brunswick, Abernathy MacGregor	Aligned across engines
7	Michael Sitrick reputation	Sitrick And Company + biographical citations	All five surface founder-buyback April 2026
8	PR firm for executive misconduct	Sitrick, Edelman, Levick, Goldin Solutions	Claude raises ethics framing
9	PR firm for activist investor attack	Joele Frank, Sard Verbinnen, Kekst CNC	Perplexity over-cites Joele Frank
10	Best alternative to Edelman	Brunswick, FGS Global, BCW, Weber Shandwick	All five engines surface tier-2 networks

The full prompt set is in Section 18.

What appears to change the modeled numbers fast.

• A high-profile named case (Boeing, Wells Fargo, Bud Light, Balenciaga, Theranos) attributed publicly to a firm
• A named-partner profile in Forbes, Bloomberg, WSJ, or HBR
• An O'Dwyer's ranking movement (top crisis firms list)
• A PRovoke Global Communications Report inclusion
• A firm ownership change (founder buyback, PE acquisition, merger)
• A PRWeek Award win in crisis category

What does not appear to change the modeled numbers fast.

• A traditional firm capabilities deck
• A new-business announcement without a named case
• A leadership-team page refresh
• A paid LinkedIn campaign without earned-media follow-on

4. The Modeled Citation Share Leaderboard

Top 25 crisis communications firms, directional modeled Citation Share. Edelman set to 100 as the index baseline.

Rank	Firm	Modeled Citation Share	Specialty Anchor
1	Edelman	100	Generalist / global default
2	Joele Frank	92	Wall Street / M&A / activist defense
3	Sitrick And Company	88	Hollywood / litigation / personal crisis
4	Brunswick Group	82	Global financial / legal
5	Sard Verbinnen & Co	78	M&A / litigation / shareholder activism
6	Kekst CNC	74	Strategic financial / restructuring
7	FGS Global	71	Global corporate / public affairs
8	APCO Worldwide	67	Regulatory / government / international
9	Teneo	64	CEO-level / board-level counsel
10	Levick	60	Litigation PR / reputation crisis
11	BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe)	56	Global network / corporate
12	FleishmanHillard	53	Corporate / consumer crisis
13	Weber Shandwick	50	IPG global network
14	5W AI Communications	47	AI Communications era / consumer crisis
15	Ketchum	44	Omnicom / broad crisis surface
16	Goldin Solutions	40	Litigation communications
17	Stone Maple Group	37	Litigation PR / Dilenschneider alumni
18	Lambert & Co	34	Restructuring / financial crisis
19	Davies Murphy Group	31	Tactical crisis / boutique
20	Polaris Public Relations	28	Hollywood crisis / entertainment
21	Ruder Finn	26	Healthcare crisis
22	Padilla	23	Mid-market crisis
23	Kelton Global	20	Sentiment + crisis
24	ICR	18	IPO / transaction crisis adjacent
25	The Dilenschneider Group	16	Personal anchor / Robert Dilenschneider

Three observations on the modeled leaderboard.

Edelman at #1 is the smallest moat in the franchise to date. Where Auction Houses' Sotheby's at #1 sits 30+ points clear of #6, Edelman's gap to Joele Frank at #2 is single-digit. The crisis-firm leaderboard is the most contested top-five in the EPR Citation Share Index series so far.

Joele Frank at #2 is the most asymmetric ranking in the study. The firm's headcount is a fraction of Edelman's; its global office count is a fraction of Brunswick's. Yet on the highest-stakes prompts — hostile takeovers, activist defense, proxy fights, contested M&A — Joele Frank wins citation share decisively. The named-partner founder model with deep financial-press citation density is the most replicable lesson in the leaderboard.

The post-merger holdings under-cite their scale. FGS Global at #7 and BCW at #11 both reflect citation-graph lag from recent identity changes. The corpus has not yet re-anchored to "FGS Global" as fluently as it still references "Finsbury" and "Glover Park" separately. Identity unification is a multi-year corpus-rebuild project.

5. Traditional Positioning vs. Chatbox Presence — The Gap Table

Firm	Traditional Positioning	Modeled Citation Share Rank	Directional Gap
Edelman	World's largest PR firm	1	Aligned at #1; moat narrower than positioning suggests
Joele Frank	Boutique M&A specialist	2	Massive positive gap vs. headcount
Sitrick And Company	LA-based crisis legend	3	Positive gap vs. revenue
Brunswick Group	Global financial communications	4	Aligned
Sard Verbinnen	M&A and litigation specialist	5	Aligned
Kekst CNC	Strategic financial comms	6	Negative gap vs. transaction footprint
FGS Global	KKR-owned global network	7	Negative gap — corpus lags merger
APCO Worldwide	Government affairs hybrid	8	Aligned
Teneo	CEO-counsel firm	9	Slight negative gap vs. board-level positioning
Levick	Litigation PR specialist	10	Aligned with named-founder anchor
BCW	WPP global network	11	Large negative gap vs. network scale
Weber Shandwick	IPG global network	13	Negative gap vs. global revenue
5W AI Communications	AI Communications Firm	14	Positive gap on AI-era prompts
Goldin Solutions	Litigation PR boutique	16	Aligned
The Dilenschneider Group	Founder-led personal counsel	25	Negative gap vs. founder visibility

Read the table directionally.

Where the corpus rewards named-partner authority and specialty depth. Joele Frank, Sitrick And Company, Sard Verbinnen, Levick. All four combine a named founder/partner citation anchor with deep specialty press coverage.

Where the corpus penalizes generalist network scale without specialty anchoring. BCW, Weber Shandwick, FleishmanHillard, Ketchum. Strong network resources, weaker named-case citation surface relative to size.

Where merger transitions cost citation share. FGS Global, BCW (multiple name changes), Kekst CNC. Identity changes reset corpus continuity. The post-merger firms need 24-36 months of consistent name reinforcement to rebuild citation share to merger-equivalent levels.

Where AI-era positioning beats traditional positioning. 5W AI Communications. The firm's repositioning as the AI Communications Firm has produced disproportionate Citation Share on AI-engine-related crisis prompts, ahead of larger generalist firms.

6. Tier Analysis

Tier 1 — Specialty Anchors (Edelman, Joele Frank, Sitrick, Brunswick, Sard Verbinnen). Universal default citations across most relevant prompts. Each owns a defined specialty surface that the corpus reaches for first.

Tier 2 — Strong Specialty + Scale (Kekst CNC, FGS Global, APCO Worldwide, Teneo, Levick). Strong on specific use cases. Anchor specific buyer-intent categories.

Tier 3 — Global Networks Without Specialty Anchor (BCW, FleishmanHillard, Weber Shandwick, Ketchum). Wide capability surface, narrower citation share per prompt. The corpus treats them as backup answers, not first answers.

Tier 4 — AI-Era and Mid-Market Specialists (5W AI Communications, Goldin Solutions, Stone Maple Group, Lambert & Co). Citation Share clustered around a defined narrow practice. Compounding on rising prompt categories.

Tier 5 — Boutique and Industry-Specific (Davies Murphy, Polaris, Ruder Finn, Padilla, Kelton). Surface on industry-specific prompts. Strong tactical reputation, narrower citation surface.

Tier 6 — Founder-Anchored Personal Practices (ICR, The Dilenschneider Group). Citation Share heavily concentrated on founder citation surface; firm-without-founder citation share is structurally lower.

7. Sub-Category Breakouts

A. Wall Street / M&A Crisis. Joele Frank, Sard Verbinnen, Brunswick, Kekst CNC, Abernathy MacGregor (not in set), FGS Global. Joele Frank wins decisively across every Wall Street prompt.

B. Hollywood / Entertainment Crisis. Sitrick And Company, Polaris, 42West (not in set), Sunshine Sachs (not in set), Goldin Solutions, ID PR (not in set). Sitrick dominates; Hollywood crisis is the most concentrated sub-category in the study.

C. Litigation PR. Goldin Solutions, Sitrick, Stone Maple Group, Levick, Bryson Gillette (not in set). Goldin Solutions and Sitrick win on litigation-specific prompts.

D. Restructuring / Bankruptcy Crisis. Lambert & Co, Sard Verbinnen, Joele Frank, FGS Global. Lambert leads on Chapter 11 specifically.

E. Regulatory / Government Action Crisis. APCO Worldwide, Brunswick, Teneo, FGS Global, Edelman. APCO and Brunswick lead.

F. Healthcare / FDA Crisis. Ruder Finn, Edelman, Weber Shandwick, Real Chemistry (not in set), Padilla. Ruder Finn's specialty depth wins.

G. Consumer Brand / Product Crisis. Edelman, FleishmanHillard, Weber Shandwick, Ketchum, 5W AI Communications. Generalist networks compete with consumer specialists.

8. Engine-by-Engine Variance

ChatGPT. Heavily weighted toward PRWeek, O'Dwyer's, Forbes, HBR case studies, and Wikipedia firm pages. Most likely to surface tier-1 default answers; most consistent across queries.

Claude. Over-indexes on HBR case studies, ethical-framing coverage, and academic crisis-case literature. More cautious on aggressive litigation PR. Surfaces named-partner credentials prominently. Most likely to caveat firm recommendations with ethics context.

Perplexity. Heavy WSJ, Bloomberg, FT, and NYT DealBook weighting. Over-cites Joele Frank and Sard Verbinnen on Wall Street prompts. Surfaces named-case citations with primary-source links.

Gemini. Heavy LinkedIn weighting. Surfaces named-partner content, firm thought leadership, and recent LinkedIn case mentions. Most volatile by query timing.

Google AI Overviews. SEO-influenced. Firms with strong owned-content (firm blog, case-study library, named-partner thought leadership) over-index.

Where the engines disagree most.

• Sitrick: ChatGPT and Claude over-cite Hollywood/entertainment context; Perplexity surfaces litigation context more
• 5W AI Communications: Claude over-cites AI Communications positioning; ChatGPT cites broader consumer crisis context
• FGS Global: Perplexity still surfaces "Finsbury" or "Glover Park" naming; ChatGPT updated faster to FGS

9. The Source Layer Audit

Category 1: Editorial and trade authority.

• Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg, WSJ, NYT DealBook, FT. Top-weight authority surface for M&A, restructuring, and Wall Street crisis prompts. Named-case coverage compounds firm citation surface for years.
• PRovoke (Holmes Report), PRWeek, O'Dwyer's. The crisis-specific trade press. Each carries category-defining annual rankings. O'Dwyer's rankings are particularly weighted in Citation Share calculations.
• The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline. Hollywood crisis citation surface. Sitrick And Company's Hollywood citation share is built largely here.
• Law360, American Lawyer, ABA Journal. Litigation PR citation surface. Goldin Solutions and Stone Maple Group build citation share through legal trade press.

Category 2: Named-case crisis coverage.

• WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg, FT, Reuters. Named-case crisis coverage that attributes firms. The Boeing 737 MAX coverage, the Wells Fargo coverage, the Theranos coverage, the Bud Light coverage — each attributes the firm(s) involved and feeds citation share for those firms for years.
• Academic case literature. HBR cases, business-school casebooks. Tylenol/J&J (Burson-Marsteller), Pepsi syringe, BP Deepwater Horizon — the cases that anchor the crisis communications discipline carry the firms that handled them.

Category 3: Authoritative third-party.

• Wikipedia. Firm pages, named-partner pages, and crisis-case sub-pages. Edelman, Brunswick, Joele Frank, Sitrick all have substantial Wikipedia entries with high citation density.
• LinkedIn. Named-partner content, firm thought leadership, recent client-case attestations. Rising weight in Gemini particularly.
• Trade association coverage. PR Council, PRSA, IPRA. Recognition and award context surfaces in citation answers.

Category 4: Founder-and-named-partner personal authority.

• Founder books and named-partner publications. Michael Sitrick's Spin, Joele Frank's WSJ commentary, Richard Levick's Forbes contributor archive, Robert Dilenschneider's books. Each builds a personal authority surface that pulls firm citation behind it.
• Conference speaker circuits. Milken, Aspen Ideas, Sun Valley adjacent press coverage. Named partners visible in conference-speaker rosters compound citation share.

Firms that appear to do best on aggregate source-layer presence. Edelman (broad), Joele Frank (deep WSJ/Bloomberg/FT), Sitrick (deep THR/Variety/litigation), Brunswick (broad financial press), Sard Verbinnen (deep M&A press). All five combine named-case attribution density with named-partner authority surface.

Firms most exposed to source-layer weakness. BCW, FleishmanHillard, Weber Shandwick — strong network presence, weaker named-case attribution. The corpus knows the firm exists; it does not consistently attribute named cases to them.

10. Named-Partner and Founder Authority Findings

The crisis-comms equivalent of expert-endorser surface is the named-partner ecosystem.

Named partners and founders surface as citation anchors at higher rates in crisis than in any other communications discipline EPR has modeled. A firm with a named partner active in Bloomberg, WSJ, or Forbes in the past six months cites materially more than a peer firm with equivalent capabilities but lower named-partner visibility.

The most-surfaced named anchors.

• Michael Sitrick (Sitrick And Company). Most-surfaced personal anchor in the study. Spin book is a structural citation anchor; the April 2026 founder buyback retriggered citation cycles.
• Joele Frank (founder, Joele Frank). Named-partner citation anchor for Wall Street crisis; WSJ commentary and Bloomberg M&A coverage feed citation directly.
• George Sard (Sard Verbinnen). M&A and litigation crisis citation anchor; NYT DealBook coverage compounds.
• Steve Sadove (Brunswick). Strategic-counsel citation anchor.
• Richard Levick (Levick). Forbes contributor archive and litigation-PR commentary surface compounds citation.
• Robert Dilenschneider (The Dilenschneider Group). Multi-book authority surface; WSJ and Bloomberg contributor archive.
• Ronn Torossian (5W AI Communications). Founder citation anchor on AI Communications, consumer, and crisis prompts; For Immediate Release two-edition book series, EPR publisher visibility.
• Larry Levy (Levy Public Relations, not in set). Hollywood crisis founder anchor.

Strategic implication. The first crisis communications firm to deliberately treat its named partners, signature-case attribution, and trade-press authority surface as a coordinated citation portfolio — managed with the same rigor as a press portfolio — appears positioned to compound an advantage no competitor is currently building deliberately.

11. Wikipedia & Firm Source Strength

Wikipedia strength. Modeled top firms by Wikipedia-page authority and citation density: Edelman, Brunswick, Joele Frank, Sitrick, Burson-Marsteller (historical, Tylenol J&J citation), Hill & Knowlton (historical), Weber Shandwick, FleishmanHillard.

Wikipedia weakness — below corpus reputation: FGS Global (post-merger entry sparse), 5W AI Communications (entry exists but underbuilt vs. corpus prominence on AI Communications prompts), Goldin Solutions, Stone Maple Group.

Strong firm-side corpus presence: Edelman (Trust Barometer annual data is a corpus-anchor signal), Brunswick (financial-crisis case library), Joele Frank (M&A case attestations), Sitrick (litigation case library).

Weaker firm-side corpus presence relative to reputation: BCW (WPP corporate restructuring has fragmented identity signals), FleishmanHillard (mid-tier in named-case attribution).

12. International and Segment-Specific Discovery

Global crisis prompts: Edelman, Brunswick, FGS Global, BCW, APCO Worldwide. English-language crisis is structurally US-and-UK-centric in modeled outputs.

European crisis prompts: Brunswick (UK roots surface), FGS Global (Hering Schuppener German roots surface intermittently), Kekst CNC (CNC German roots surface), Hering Schuppener legacy citations persist. Continental European crisis specialists outside the major networks under-cited.

Asian crisis prompts: Edelman, BCW, Weber Shandwick global presence cites in. Local Asian crisis specialists under-represented in English corpus.

Latin American crisis prompts: Edelman, FleishmanHillard, llorente y cuenca (not in set). Limited specialist coverage in English corpus.

Healthcare crisis-specific prompts: Ruder Finn, Edelman, Real Chemistry (not in set), Weber Shandwick, Padilla. Ruder Finn's specialty depth dominates.

Financial services crisis-specific prompts: Joele Frank, Sard Verbinnen, Brunswick, Kekst CNC, FGS Global. Tightest specialist cluster in the study.

Tech crisis-specific prompts: Edelman, Brunswick, Bateman Group (not in set), Sard Verbinnen, FGS Global. Bigger generalists win tech crisis prompts; specialty-tech crisis firms under-cited.

13. The Crisis Comms AI Visibility Gap

The visibility gap between traditional positioning and modeled Citation Share appears to be widening.

Three structural reasons.

One. Named-partner-corpus reinforcement. Every WSJ commentary, Bloomberg interview, or Forbes contributor article compounds corpus weight for the named partner — and pulls firm citation behind it. Firms without active named-partner visibility stagnate regardless of capability.

Two. Named-case attribution flywheel. Firms publicly attributed to high-profile crises (Boeing, Wells Fargo, Bud Light, J&J) compound citation share every time the case is recited in subsequent press, business-school casebook, or AI engine answer.

Three. Trade-press ranking velocity. O'Dwyer's, Holmes Report, PRWeek rankings update annually; the corpus refreshes those rankings into citation share with a 6-12 month lag. Firms that move up rankings see citation share rise; firms that drop see citation share decline.

Most-exposed firms inside the gap.

Strong revenue, weak named-partner visibility:

• BCW, Weber Shandwick, FleishmanHillard, Ketchum. Network scale exists; named-partner citation surface is structurally lower than scale would predict.

Strong global presence, weak US-English corpus:

• Continental European crisis specialists. Asian and Latin American crisis specialists. English corpus underrepresentation.

Active controversy reshaping context:

• Edelman. Tobacco-industry historical work, Trump-era controversy, occasional client-controversy coverage. Edelman's #1 position is durable but the corpus carries persistent context.
• APCO Worldwide. Historical regulatory client coverage in the corpus.

The exposure is not abstract. Each missing citation is a board chair who did not see the firm as an option.

14. Firm & Reputation Risk Surface

Category 1: Active controversy citations. Edelman tobacco-industry historical work. Burson-Marsteller historical client controversies. APCO regulatory client coverage. Hill & Knowlton's Kuwait/Gulf War controversy. These appear tagged in the corpus and reappear when a firm is named.

Category 2: Persistent reputation framings. Edelman as "the global default." Joele Frank as "Wall Street's crisis firm." Sitrick as "Hollywood's fixer." Brunswick as "the British financial firm." These are durable corpus framings — useful when the framing fits the buyer's need, limiting when it does not.

Category 3: Latent risk from absence. Firms the engines do not surface for relevant prompts. Absence appears to be the largest reputation risk most crisis communications firms face.

Audit cadence. Monthly during active controversy cycles. Quarterly minimum during stable periods.

15. Strategic Implications by Firm Function

Firm marketing. Top-of-funnel discovery has migrated. Marketing must add continuous AI Visibility audits, named-partner trade-press cultivation, named-case attribution capture, and O'Dwyer's/Holmes Report ranking strategy.

New business / RFP. The four-firm shortlist that arrives in front of a buyer is increasingly the chatbox's first answer. Position to be in that first answer; do not assume the buyer will continue searching.

Named-partner authority development. Treat senior partners' editorial visibility, conference speaking, and authored content as a coordinated portfolio — same rigor as press. Named-partner citation surface is the highest-leverage individual investment in modern crisis comms.

Case-history capture. When clients permit public attribution, capture it in firm-owned content. When clients do not, capture the case-handling framework in anonymized case studies that build practice-area citation surface.

International expansion. Crisis-firm Citation Share varies substantially by region. International Citation Share requires regional-press cultivation, local-language authority surface, and culturally appropriate crisis-framework adaptation.

Practice-area specialization. The corpus rewards specialty depth over generalist scale. Firms that build deep practice-area citation surface (litigation PR, restructuring crisis, M&A defense, healthcare crisis) outperform generalist firms of equivalent size.

16. The Paid / Earned / Reputation-Layer Framework for Crisis Communications

Paid. Trade-press sponsored content, conference sponsorship, LinkedIn paid, search ads for firm name.

Where paid earns its keep: trade-press visibility around tentpole events (Cannes, Milken, Davos), category-specific conference presence.

Where paid is overspent: LinkedIn paid without organic founder-content build; trade-press sponsored content without earned-media follow-on.

Earned. WSJ, Bloomberg, FT, NYT DealBook, Forbes contributed authority, HBR case authorship, PRovoke/Holmes/PRWeek/O'Dwyer's editorial, named-case attribution in major press.

Where earned needs to expand: named-partner op-eds; founder visibility in mainstream business press; HBR case authorship; named-case attribution capture.

Reputation layer. The third channel.

Reputation-layer surface to build operating capacity around:

• Named-partner authority ecosystem as a long-term editorial relationship channel.
• Trade-press ranking strategy (O'Dwyer's, Holmes Report, PRWeek) treated as managed citation surface, not annual paperwork.
• LinkedIn named-partner content built on substantive case-framework commentary, not promotional content.
• Conference speaker circuits managed as a coordinated portfolio.
• Wikipedia maintenance for firm, founder, and major-case pages.
• Owned case-study library built for AI-engine retrieval — schema markup, structured data, named-case anchor pages.

Budget rebalancing implication. Crisis communications firms currently spending heavily on new-business pursuit and conference sponsorship may need to reallocate 15-25% toward reputation-layer capacity over the next 24 months.

17. The GEO Playbook for Crisis Communications Firms

One. Map the prompt set. 60-120 buyer-intent crisis prompts. Refresh quarterly.

Two. Baseline modeled Citation Share across five engines.

Three. Build named-case anchors. Capture public case attribution. Build anonymized framework case studies for cases without public attribution.

Four. Develop named-partner authority portfolios. WSJ, Bloomberg, Forbes, HBR, FT contributor surface. Conference speaker circuits. Authored books or substantive long-form content. Treat as a multi-year compounding investment.

Five. Engage the trade-press citation surface. PRovoke, PRWeek, O'Dwyer's. Treat annual rankings as managed strategic priorities, not afterthoughts.

Six. Build practice-area depth pages. Litigation PR, restructuring, M&A defense, healthcare crisis — each as a deep, schema-marked, citation-ready firm-owned content surface.

Seven. Restructure firm content for retrieval. Schema markup, structured data, named-partner pages, named-case pages, practice-area pages.

Eight. Address international expansion deliberately. International Citation Share is built separately by region; the US English corpus does not extrapolate from domestic strength.

Nine. Measure monthly. Adjust quarterly. Compound over years. Citation Share is not a campaign. It is a long-position discipline.

18. Methodology Appendix + Full Prompt List

Universe (25 firms).

Global Networks: Edelman, Brunswick Group, FGS Global, APCO Worldwide, BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe), FleishmanHillard, Weber Shandwick, Ketchum, Ruder Finn.

US Independents and Specialists: Joele Frank, Sitrick And Company, Sard Verbinnen & Co, Kekst CNC, Teneo, Levick, 5W AI Communications, Goldin Solutions, Stone Maple Group, Lambert & Co, Davies Murphy Group, Polaris Public Relations, Padilla, Kelton Global, ICR, The Dilenschneider Group.

Engines modeled: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews.

Modeling sources. Wikipedia firm and crisis-case pages, Harvard Business Review case studies, PRovoke/Holmes Report editorial and rankings, PRWeek coverage, O'Dwyer's category rankings, Forbes practitioner profiles, WSJ, Bloomberg, NYT DealBook, FT, Reuters, Law360, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline, American Lawyer, ABA Journal, LinkedIn founder and partner content, Reddit r/PublicRelations (limited weight), conference-speaker coverage, named-case crisis attribution in major business press.

Method note. This study models corpus-weighted Citation Share patterns at the firm and practice-area level; per-query measurement is not in scope. Modeled patterns appear stable across observation periods but should be read as directional, not definitive.

Prompt set — 62 prompts across 7 sub-categories.

A. Best Crisis Firm by Use Case (10)

1. Best crisis communications firm
2. Best crisis PR firm
3. Best crisis management firm
4. Top crisis communications agency
5. Best PR firm for handling a scandal
6. Who handles crisis communications for big companies
7. Best crisis PR firm for CEO scandal
8. Best M&A crisis communications firm
9. Best crisis firm for restructuring
10. Best crisis PR firm in 2026

B. Industry-Specific Crisis (8)

11. Best crisis PR firm Wall Street
12. Best crisis PR firm Hollywood
13. Best crisis PR firm healthcare
14. Best crisis PR firm tech
15. Best crisis PR firm consumer brands
16. Best crisis PR firm law firm
17. Best crisis PR firm political
18. Best crisis PR firm sports

C. Specific Crisis Scenarios (10)

19. PR firm to hire for product recall
20. PR firm for sexual misconduct allegations
21. PR firm for data breach
22. PR firm for executive misconduct
23. PR firm for IPO blowup
24. PR firm for activist investor attack
25. PR firm for hostile takeover
26. PR firm for litigation
27. PR firm for FDA action
28. PR firm for federal investigation

D. Comparative Firm Prompts (8)

29. Edelman vs Joele Frank
30. Sitrick vs Sard Verbinnen
31. Brunswick vs FGS Global
32. Kekst vs Joele Frank
33. Best alternative to Edelman
34. Best independent crisis PR firm
35. Best boutique crisis firm
36. Best global crisis PR network

E. Named Crisis Cases (8)

37. PR firm that handled Boeing crisis
38. PR firm that handled BP oil spill
39. PR firm Tylenol J&J
40. PR firm Wells Fargo
41. PR firm Volkswagen Dieselgate
42. PR firm Theranos
43. PR firm Bud Light
44. PR firm Balenciaga

F. Practitioner / Founder Prompts (8)

45. Best crisis communications expert
46. Best crisis PR consultant
47. Michael Sitrick reputation
48. Richard Levick crisis expert
49. Joele Frank biography
50. George Sard crisis cases
51. Robert Dilenschneider books
52. Ronn Torossian crisis communications

G. Strategic & Business Prompts (10)

53. How much does crisis PR cost
54. Crisis PR retainer rates
55. Crisis communications playbook
56. Best crisis PR for IPO companies
57. Best crisis PR for private equity
58. Top crisis PR firms by revenue
59. Crisis PR firm market share
60. Largest crisis communications firm
61. Crisis PR firm rankings
62. O'Dwyer's crisis communications rankings

Limitations.

This study is a directional modeling exercise calibrated against observed engine behavior across a representative 62-prompt set. It models corpus-weighted Citation Share patterns at the firm and practice-area level; per-query measurement is not in scope. Modeled patterns appear stable across observation periods but should be read as directional, not definitive.

The study set does not include every relevant crisis communications firm. Several firms that appear materially in answer engine outputs (Abernathy MacGregor, Sunshine Sachs, 42West, MacKenzie Partners, Bateman Group, Bryson Gillette, ID PR, Real Chemistry, Llorente y Cuenca, and others) are flagged in-text where their absence from the universe affects findings.

International findings reflect English-language corpus patterns. Non-English engines may produce different leaderboards.

Crisis communications firm citation share is structurally less volatile than consumer-brand citation share — but ownership changes, named-partner departures, named-case attributions, and trade-press ranking movements can shift the leaderboard materially within 6-18 months.

19. Related EPR Coverage

Live EPR agency profiles cross-referenced in this study.

• Levick: Agency Profile — one of Washington's longest-standing litigation communications and crisis specialists. Founded 1998 by Richard Levick.
• APCO Worldwide: Agency Profile — one of the largest independent global advisory firms at the intersection of public affairs and crisis. Founded 1984 by Margery Kraus.
• Sard Verbinnen & Co: Agency Profile — one of the most influential firms in the U.S. corporate crisis and special situations market. Founded 1992. Part of FGS Global.
• Real Chemistry: Agency Profile — the global healthcare innovation company referenced in the healthcare crisis sub-category.
• The Reputation Firms That Actually Run This Work — the EPR companion piece on which firms actually execute reputation and crisis work.

20. Part of the EPR Citation Share Index Franchise

The Crisis Communications Citation Share Index is one entry in Everything-PR's standing Citation Share Index research series — one method, every category — measuring who owns the AI answer across the economy. See also the sister franchise Who Controls AI Answers.

• The Reputation Management Citation Share Index 2026 — the sister index. Status Labs leads executive ORM, Reputation.com leads enterprise SaaS, the most fragmented leaderboard in the franchise.
• The Cannabis Index: Who Owns the Answer Inside AI in 2026 — Curaleaf, Trulieve, GTI lead the most regulated consumer category in America.
• The Entertainment Citation Share Index 2026 — Disney #1, Netflix #2, Warner #3. A24 the most over-cited company in the study.
• The Fashion Citation Share Index 2026 — Chanel #1, Louis Vuitton #2, Hermès #3. Business of Fashion edges Vogue as the dominant retrieval anchor.
• The Automotive Citation Share Index 2026 — Toyota #1, Tesla #2, Honda #3. 28 brands, 64 prompts. BYD nearly invisible in US English.
• The Defense Citation Share Index 2026 — Methodology — how the index is built.