In a PR crisis, know-how and response timing are only part of the puzzle. For the second year in a row, we examined how people engaged with news around major brand crises over the last 12 months — from some of the most innovative tech companies in the world to one of the oldest food companies in existence.
We studied them so we could surface learnings and lessons to you, without having to live through the drama first-hand. We also conducted our second annual survey of 1,000 comms pros, uncovering what your peers are most concerned about in 2024, how they plan for potential crises, and their approach to incident response. (You can find last year’s survey results in the 2023 State of Crisis Comms report.)
The 2024 Crisis Index covers the factors that influenced readers (unique visitors to articles) across different types of crises, learnings from missteps and triumphs, and the role of comms through it all. This blog provides a glimpse into the larger report, which you can read in full in our Resource Center.
Preparing for a Range of Crises
When it comes to crises, there are numerous top of mind for PR pros: layoffs, legal issues, cyber incidents, natural disasters, financial issues, workplace incidents, and more.
While these professionals are more prepared for some issues (i.e. cyber incidents) than others (layoffs), the majority reported they do not have a plan for any of these potential crises that could land in their lap.
Speak Up or Shut Up?
We looked at a range of brand-specific crises, including AT&T’s February outage and Tesla’s Cybertruck woes to better understand how speaking up or shutting up impacts readership in positive and negative ways.
These two crises were quite different, and so were the responses from each company. AT&T moved quickly to identify the issue and relay that to customers and the general public. Tesla chose to stay quiet, which led to issues and media interest compounding over weeks and months.
Agency and In-House Trust Is Strong
Memo also examined how much in-house communications teams trust their agency partners in a PR crisis. The response? The vast majority – nearly 70% – said their agency was helpful in creating a plan to address crises.
In the same breath, data is playing a key role in both environments, with 81% of in-house professionals and 72% of agency professionals saying they turn to data to inform their strategy when the stakes are high.
And More…
In the full 2024 Crisis Index we unpack how brand responses, timing, and other factors influence readership for better and for worse. We tackle crises like layoffs, airplane failures, CEOs acting out, fumbled earnings calls, and more. We studied countless crises so you don’t have to live it to learn it. Knock on wood.