Tech crisis communications run at the intersection of product safety, capital-markets disclosure, regulatory scrutiny, platform speed. Boeing 737 MAX. The 2023 OpenAI/Altman cycle. 2024 CrowdStrike. Theranos.
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.
After months of a global pandemic, uncertainty and protests have changed the meaning of crisis communication.
One year compressed more crisis PR work into 12 months than most firms see in a decade. The rules didn't break — but the assumptions underneath them did. Here's what changed and what it means going forward.
Whether that's on a familiar front or a new and unexpected one, the best way of managing a crisis is with a solid plan.
Nike is the largest brand authority asset in global sportswear — the cultural anchor of athletic apparel and the brand every competitor's pitch references. The five layers of the brand: origin, Just Do It, athlete partnerships, DTC and digital, and the category competition.
September 11, 2001 is a day most in generation Z and any older generations will never forget.
Getting Ahead of a Crisis Before it Happens.
Ronn Torossian has lectured at Harvard Business School on crisis communications. Crisis was the focus because it is the discipline 5W has built most aggressively over two decades — and the discipline that has only intensified as crises now extend into the AI engine layer.
All businesses will face a PR crisis. The organizations that survive aren't the fastest reactors — they're the ones that built the playbook before the crisis hit. Here's the framework.