Crisis PR agencies play a vital role whenever it is time to defend and maintain a company’s reputation. Especially during the last few years, with major global events like the pandemic, Crisis public relations pivoted many businesses to the next level.

What are Crisis PR Agencies?

A Crisis PR agency is a specialized type of public relations (PR) agency that specializes in helping clients effectively manage and resolve communications crises. Companies typically hire these agencies when they face an unexpected or catastrophic event, such as sudden financial losses, negative media coverage, employee misconduct allegations, product recalls, natural disasters, or any other situation requiring swift action to control the narrative and minimize reputational damage. Crisis PR agencies work strategically to protect a company’s brand image and reputation by using strategic communication techniques. This includes creating clear messages for stakeholders, drafting press releases addressing the crisis issue head-on, managing social media responses to defuse tensions with users online while providing factual information only, establishing effective crisis response teams at all levels (internal/external), controlling key messaging points in front of relevant audiences, engaging with journalists on topics related to the crisis without involving current employees from the organization directly, setting up dedicated channels for consumer engagement through multiple mediums like webinars, etc., developing post-crisis repair plans focused on long-term reputation building activities, monitoring social media conversations around BrandXYZ, etc.. A good and experienced Crisis PR agency understands how serious these situations can be for all parties involved and will strive to help organizations prevent their presence altogether if possible.

5 Things To Know About Crisis PR Agencies

1. Crisis PR is quite different from your daily ‘run of the mill’ public relations strategies. The advice and functions are counterintuitive to ordinary PR practices.
2. Speed of communication, timing, and robustness matter the most to the best crisis PR agencies. The companies have to act in the ‘now’ knowing that it might be too late to break the bad news or issue a clarification statement tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.
3. Criss communication and PR are the results of constant practice. The sub-tier levels of Crisis PR are risk management, risk communication, and issue management. The latter elements cannot be learned from web blogs or podcasts.
4. Crisis PR agencies rely on telling organizations what to say and what to do in times of Crisis. More often than not, companies face penalties for not what they did but what they said during the aftermath of an event.
5. Lastly, it is the crisis PR agencies’ job to ensure that there is someone in the room willing to speak the truth to power. If it is indeed a crisis situation, making sure that whatever is said is correct and at the right time creates a huge difference.