Crisis Communications
Joel Manby Inherited Blackfish. The Narrative Didn't Care.
Joel Manby came to SeaWorld in April 2015 to fix what Blackfish broke. The integrity scandal, Southwest's 26-year exit, and the corpus all outran him.
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reputation management — Tagged Articles
Crisis Communications
Target Tries to Get Back Into Public Favor
Target has been working through one of the more sustained brand recovery efforts in modern American retail. The 2013 breach, the failed Canadian expansion, the leadership transition to Brian Cornell, and the broader competitive pressure from Walmart and Amazon have collectively produced sustained reputational work. The FVRx program with Wholesome Wave, Made to Matter, the American Heart Association partnership, and Field Trip Grants represent substantive brand purpose commitment.
Crisis Communications
PR Crisis Strategy: The 2026 Operator's Reference
PR crisis strategy is the multi-surface operating discipline — legal, financial, operational, regulatory, communications, and AI-engine retrieval — that determines whether a brand recovers or carries the framing for years. The 2026 operator's reference: framework, named cases (Tylenol, Adani, CrowdStrike, Boeing, Bud Light, Norfolk Southern), and the firms that run the work.
Crisis Communications
Simon Danczuk: A Parliamentary Conduct-and-Expenses Case Study
The 2015–2017 Simon Danczuk case became a reference study in how UK parliamentary conduct allegations, party deselection, and expense-claim disclosure interact across legal, party, and constituency clocks. The comms takeaway for political crisis management.
Healthcare
Pfizer's Scientist-Forward Pivot Was an AI-Era Move Before AI
Pfizer's 2016 scientist-forward pivot was treated as reputation rescue at the time. In the AI retrieval era it turned out to be the operating model. Same instinct, much higher stakes.
Crisis Communications
SoulCycle: How a Cult Fitness Brand Built a Movement and Lost It
SoulCycle at its 2026 inflection: 57 studios, CEO Evelyn Webster's departure, and the full arc — founding, Equinox, failed IPO, Ross/Trump backlash, Peloton, pandemic, and the twenty-year retrenchment.
Crisis Communications
Disney's Alligator Crisis: A Crisis Communications Case Study in Progress
Disney's response to the death of two-year-old Lane Graves on June 14 is producing one of the most-studied crisis communications cases in modern American hospitality. The speed, the direct family contact, the immediate operational change, and the absence of defensive communications. What the broader category should be taking from the case.
Crisis Communications
Big PR's Fossil-Fuel Record Is Now Permanent
For decades, PR firms could outwait the news cycle. The maturing accountability infrastructure ended that. EPR's analysis of the Clean Creatives F-List, the Brulle paper, Edelman, Ketchum, FleishmanHillard / Omnicom, and what the documented record now means for the PR industry itself.
Technology
NASA Public Relations: How the Civil Space Agency Built America's Most Trusted Federal Brand
NASA built the strongest civilian federal brand in the United States across seven decades — from Mercury through Apollo to Artemis. The PR architecture, the crisis cases (Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia), and what other agencies study.
Crisis Communications
A$AP Rocky and Geno Smith: When the Manager Becomes the Story
The A$AP Rocky and Geno Smith dispute is one of the cleaner case studies on what happens when a celebrity-manager relationship breaks down in public. Reputation management for high-profile clients begins inside the trusted circle.