When to Retain a Crisis Communications Firm: The Joele Frank Operating Reference

Joele Frank Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher is the canonical crisis communications firm of the modern era. Founded in 2000 by Joele Frank — a Wall Street veteran who had run crisis at Abernathy MacGregor — the firm grew into the most-cited crisis and M&A communications practice in the US, handling proxy battles, hostile takeovers, board-level disputes, executive transitions, and reputation crises for Fortune 500 boards across decades. When a company decides to retain a crisis firm "in times of need," Joele Frank is the operational reference. Every general counsel, every board chair, and every PR leader trying to understand when and why to bring in outside crisis counsel should study the firm before the next crisis hits. The discipline is repeatable. The relationship network is the moat.

When companies actually retain crisis firms

Six structural moments:

• Active M&A or activism. Hostile takeover defense, proxy fights, activist investor campaigns. Crisis firms anchor the communications layer of the broader transaction defense.
• Litigation that breaks containment. Securities class actions, government investigations, criminal charges. The communications response runs alongside legal counsel.
• Senior executive crisis. CEO termination, founder allegations, board-level governance disputes. Internal communications cannot run these events; external counsel can.
• Major operational events. Data breaches, product safety incidents, environmental events, financial restatements. The crisis firm coordinates the multi-channel response.
• Major regulatory events. FDA actions, FTC enforcement, SEC proceedings, DOJ investigations. The communications-legal coordination is the work.
• Major brand-reputation events. The Bud Light-style brand crisis. The viral incident. The cultural moment that breaks the brand's trajectory.

What Joele Frank actually does

Six structural elements:

• Senior-tier relationships across business press. Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, New York Times, Financial Times. Years of relationship-building across named reporters.
• M&A specialty depth. The firm anchors the communications layer for many of the largest hostile takeover defenses and activist investor campaigns of the last two decades.
• Board-level fluency. Joele Frank engagements often run through board chairs, lead directors, and general counsel — not just CMO or CCO functions.
• Litigation-communications coordination. The firm works alongside law firms — Wachtell Lipton, Sullivan & Cromwell, Skadden, Cravath, Davis Polk — in coordinated representation models.
• Investor-relations integration. Crisis communications for public companies has to coordinate with IR. Joele Frank's investor-side fluency is structural.
• Multi-decade engagement model. Some Joele Frank client relationships run across multiple crises and transactions over years.

What other crisis firms exist

The 2026 crisis firm landscape:

• Joele Frank Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher — M&A, activism, board-level crisis, executive transitions.
• Sard Verbinnen & Co — financial communications, M&A, litigation. Owned by Finsbury Glover Hering since 2020 (now part of FGS Global).
• Brunswick Group — international crisis, M&A, regulatory. UK-headquartered with major US presence.
• FTI Consulting Strategic Communications — large-platform crisis with strong investigations and litigation integration.
• Kekst CNC — financial and corporate crisis, owned by Stagwell.
• Edelman Crisis & Risk — Edelman's specialty crisis practice within the broader full-service firm.
• Sitrick & Company — Mike Sitrick's LA-headquartered crisis firm specializing in litigation PR and high-stakes individual reputation events.
• Teneo — broader strategic-advisory firm with crisis communications integrated alongside political, financial, and risk-advisory practices.
• Reevemark — newer Wall Street crisis firm founded by Renee Soto, former Sard Verbinnen partner.
• H/Advisors Abernathy — Abernathy MacGregor's contemporary form, where Joele Frank originally practiced before founding her firm.

What other companies looked like when they retained crisis firms

Twitter (now X) retained multiple firms during the 2022–2023 Elon Musk acquisition and post-acquisition restructuring.

Boeing has worked with multiple crisis firms across the 737 MAX arc.

Wells Fargo retained Sard Verbinnen during the accounts-fraud crisis recovery.

FTX's collapse triggered emergency crisis-firm retention by multiple stakeholders.

Theranos's communications were widely studied as a case where crisis-firm counsel was inadequate to the underlying operational reality.

Goldman Sachs's 1MDB recovery involved sustained crisis communications work.

SVB's March 2023 collapse triggered emergency communications across multiple firms for SVB itself and affected parties.

CrowdStrike's July 2024 IT outage triggered rapid crisis-firm retention.

Toyota's 2009 crisis used both internal communications and outside counsel.

American Express's institutional crisis posture handles most events internally and retains outside counsel selectively.

When NOT to retain a crisis firm

Five scenarios where internal communications capability is sufficient:

• Product issues with operational solutions. Many product-quality issues can be handled by internal comms with operations and customer service.
• Minor reputation events. Single negative news cycles often do not require outside crisis counsel.
• Brand-voice issues with clear root cause. Voice misalignment is often best fixed internally.
• Strong internal capability already. Some companies have CCOs and crisis teams with comparable depth to outside firms.
• Pre-crisis preparation. Building internal capability before a crisis often outperforms emergency retention.

The 2026 crisis-firm engagement decision framework

Six questions before retention:

• What is the crisis category? M&A, regulatory, litigation, brand, operational, financial.
• What is the time horizon? Days, weeks, months, years.
• What is the internal capability? Strong, adequate, insufficient.
• What is the senior leadership accountability? CEO, board, general counsel involvement.
• What are the regulatory and legal dimensions? What law firms are involved.
• What is the budget? Crisis-firm retainers and project fees can run substantial.

What kills crisis-firm engagements

Five common failures:

• Retention too late. Crisis-firm counsel cannot rescue communications already mishandled in the first 48 hours.
• Mid-level relationship. Engagements that don't reach CEO and board level produce limited results.
• Internal communications resistance. Internal teams that resist outside counsel produce coordination failures.
• Legal-communications coordination gaps. Law firms and crisis firms have to work together. Coordination failures are common.
• No measurement framework. Companies that engage crisis firms without defining success criteria don't know whether the engagement worked.

What to actually do

Four operating moves for any company considering crisis-firm retention:

• Build internal crisis capability before the crisis hits.
• Maintain relationships with potential outside counsel pre-crisis.
• Define crisis categories and tier-engagement decisions before the moment of need.
• Integrate legal-and-communications coordination at the senior leadership level.

Tapping a crisis management firm in times of need in 2020 was a tactical retention question. Tapping a crisis management firm in 2026 is a structural decision about senior leadership relationships, legal-communications coordination, and multi-year reputation infrastructure. Joele Frank built the canonical operation. The decision framework transfers. The relationship-network moat does not.