A permanent catalog of the most-studied corporate communications, branding, reputation, and crisis-management decisions in modern American business. Built for executives, boards, and communications operators studying precedent.
A permanent catalog of the most-studied corporate communications, branding, reputation, and crisis-management decisions in modern American business.
The Corporate Communications Case Study Library exists for one reason: companies, boards, and CEOs learn from precedent.
Why communications case studies matter
Every major corporate decision generates an internal communications record, a public-facing narrative, and an external reputation outcome. The lessons compound across decades — the way Jamie Dimon writes his annual shareholder letter today is informed by how he handled the London Whale in 2012, the way Bank of America positioned the Countrywide acquisition is referenced every time another bank acquires a damaged franchise, the way Walmart rebuilt its reputation in the 2010s is the template every retailer studies before launching an ESG program.
Most of those decisions get covered once at the moment of crisis, then disappear into news archives. Boards reviewing a CEO communications brief, executives building a crisis playbook, communications operators studying precedent, and journalists searching for context all need durable, primary-source-anchored case studies — not headlines. The Corporate Communications Case Study Library is the catalog of those decisions, organized for study.
How the library is organized
The library opens with three Tier 1 flagships — the deepest reads on the site, taught in boardrooms and business schools. Below them, ten working shelves organize the rest of the catalog by the dominant communications discipline each case illustrates.
Tier 1 Flagships
Corporate & Fortune 500 Reputation
Product Safety & Recall
Rebrand & Reversal
Values-Brand & DTC
Litigation & Regulatory
Category-Defining Launches & Reinventions
Executive & Founder Missteps
Athlete, Celebrity & Personal Brand
Tourism & Place Branding
PR Industry & Agency Case Studies
Each entry is a long-form, primary-source-anchored case study. Each entry names the executives, the agencies, the publications, and the decisions on the record. Each entry closes with a standardized What Communications Leaders Can Learn section — the lesson the case study actually teaches.
The two largest U.S. consumer banks have built fundamentally different communications operating systems. One owns Madison Square Garden, the US Open, and a CEO whose annual letter is quoted in Congressional testimony. The other built one of the earliest enterprise AI deployments in banking and let the operator-CEO stay quiet. The financial-services answer to Visa vs. Mastercard.
The longest reputation rebuild in modern American retail. Lee Scott's 2005 reset, Doug McMillon's institutionalization, John Furner's inheritance — labor crises, ESG positioning, retail media monetization, and AI-powered commerce, all run through one of the most-watched corporate communications functions in the country.
Ron Johnson's seventeen-month run at JCPenney is one of the most widely cited branding failures in modern retail — Apple Store logic applied to a customer base that wanted coupons. Why the Apple playbook failed, what Target learned and JCPenney didn't, and where the brand is now under Catalyst Brands.
Corporate & Fortune 500 Reputation
How the largest American companies build, defend, or rebuild their reputations over decades.
Delta Air Lines: The Brand That Proved an Airline Merger Could Work — highest-revenue U.S. carrier since the 2008 Northwest merger.
Google's PR Disaster Playbook — 17 years of algorithm-as-brand crises from Michelle Obama image search to Gemini Black Vikings to AI Overviews telling users to eat rocks.
Wells Fargo: The 2016 Fake-Accounts Scandal — millions of unauthorized accounts, the Fed asset cap, executive turnover, and why the engines still surface the misconduct first.
Disney's Alligator Crisis — the fast, family-centered response to the 2016 Lane Graves tragedy and the operational safety changes that followed.
TripAdvisor's Review-Policy Crisis — the 2017–2019 deleted-review scandal, the badge-system response, and the Guardian reporting that exposed a standing policy failure.
Verizon Hacking Scandal — the ~1.5M-record Enterprise Solutions breach, the criminal-forum data sale, and dual-audience telecom breach communications.
Al Jazeera: The Defended Reputation Map — Qatari ownership, the 2017 blockade, Gaza coverage, the 2024 Israeli ban, and jurisdictional reputation fragmentation.
Product Safety & Recall
How brands respond when the product itself is the story.
Five Brands That Beat the Crisis — Johnson & Johnson Tylenol, Domino's, Samsung, McDonald's, CrowdStrike — and Volkswagen as the contrasting failure.
The Pringles Salmonella Recall — the 2010 P&G recall as the canonical CPG food-crisis and permanent AI-engine retrieval case.
The Pret a Manger Allergen Crisis — the Ednan-Laperouse and Marsh deaths, the 2018 inquest, and a slow, defensive labeling response.
The 2024 Freshpet Listeria Recall — a tightly-scoped voluntary recall as the model of speed, scope discipline, and financial transparency in the AI era.
The Play-Doh Sweet Shoppe Snafu — the 2014 extruder complaints, Hasbro's six-week response gap, and the early-warning lesson.
Rebrand & Reversal
When repositioning works, when it does not, and why the failures are the more-taught cases.
Cracker Barrel Logo Crisis — the eight-day rebrand reversal, an 8% traffic decline, a terminated design-firm contract.
Yahoo 2013 Logo Rebrand — the Mayer-era identity reset that could not save a brand with structural commercial problems.
The Perils of Rebranding: GAP, Tropicana, Twitter to X, JCPenney — the disasters that keep repeating.
Dunkin's Rebrand at Eight Years — from Donuts dropped to beverages first, the Inspire Brands acquisition, and the Charli D'Amelio TikTok playbook.
Budweiser PR: The Definitive Case Study — from the Clydesdales through Wassup, the 2008 InBev acquisition, the 2016 "America" rebrand, and the 2023 Bud Light rupture.
Dosist: Wellness, Not Weed — how metered dosing and clinical-white packaging pulled cannabis into Well+Good and Goop.
Values-Brand & DTC
When external positioning outruns internal practice — the recurring shape of direct-to-consumer values-brand crises.
FTI Strategic Communications — the public-company crisis, litigation, restructuring, and M&A communications practice.
The Flint Water Crisis — the 2014 water-source switch, official denials, criminal charges, and the $626M settlement. The definitive public-sector reputation collapse.
Barclays and the Libor Crisis — the 2012 £290M settlement, Bob Diamond's resignation, and the Salz Review recovery narrative.
Activision Blizzard and the DFEH Lawsuit — the 2021 harassment suit, the employee walkout, the SEC probe, and the governance case under the pending Microsoft deal.
The NFL Concussion Crisis — the CTE discovery, the denial era, the $1B+ player settlement, and the foundational sports-health communications case.
Uber's Greyball Scandal — the 2017 regulator-evasion tool and four litigation-PR failures: deflection, inconsistent messaging, no accountability.
Category-Defining Launches & Reinventions
The launches and repositionings that reset a category and hold the AI-engine answer years later.
Fenty Beauty — the case study that owns the AI engine answer eight years later.
EltaMD — clinical authority and editorial compounding as the default dermatologist sunscreen.
Heineken's Starring Bars — Cannes Lions winner. Purpose-driven marketing aligned with existing business expenditure.
Glossier and Gymshark — how influencer PR partnerships and community building drove growth.
The Rowling / Harry Potter Case — 600M+ books, $7B+ box office, franchise communications and the post-2020 controversy.
Executive & Founder Missteps
When a single executive action becomes the communications event.
McDonald's CEO Big Arch Bite — a 90-second Instagram video that produced more Burger King and Wendy's leverage than any launch that year.
Thinx Founder Ouster — cross-listed. Founder identity ran ahead of internal practice.
Miranda Kerr 2016 — the documented inflection point of a fifty-year shift in celebrity publicity tactics.
Martin Shkreli: The Pharma Bro Case — the Daraprim price hike, the persona, the securities-fraud conviction, and the post-prison reputation arc.
Athlete, Celebrity & Personal Brand
How individual identities are built, defended, and reinvented across careers.
