Be on the Lookout for Crisis Pretenders

Maria Stagliano

“There are PR firms that do crisis, and there are crisis firms that do PR. We’re the latter.”

This was a clever bit of salesmanship spoken during a pitch call, my first week with an internationally recognized—and now defunct—D.C.-based crisis shop several years back. And while it may have been intended as “pitch-speak,” its nonetheless lasting message has stuck with me throughout my time working in the very rarified world of true crisis communications.

The more I’ve come to live in the world of crisis while observing the “regular” PR world, the more I’ve come to realize the importance of understanding what makes a crisis firm a legitimate, reliable force for reputation restoration and preservation, versus some of the posers out there who offer “crisis” as an off-to-the-side service area.

Crisis has become the sexy add-on service that just about every PR firm claims to specialize in, most especially post-COVID. Every PR shop that helped a client through the COVID era felt entitled to add “crisis” to its offerings without having real experience in the practice, beyond the crisis we all collectively went through during the global pandemic.

When companies are facing major threats that can affect their reputation, employee morale, financial posture or public trust, it’s critical they’re able to identify the very best PR firm that fits their needs: a crisis firm. And true crisis firms are much rarer than PR firms that add marked-up real-time media monitoring services to their engagements and then declare themselves fit and ready to handle the worst-of-all possible unfolding situations.

Everyone wants to claim they do crisis, but let’s be realistic: If you’re spending the majority of your day writing puff pieces and press releases, while pitching clients as thought leaders to reporters, you’re not a crisis PR firm. If you’re spending your days brainstorming ways to get your client in the news, reaching out for the tenth time to the same reporter who hasn’t shown any interest, you’re probably not a crisis shop.

Now, if you spend the majority of your day offering strategic PR counsel to executives, coordinating with law firms and having on- and off-the-record discussions with reporters to correct public falsehoods, you’re most certainly a crisis PR firm. You understand how to manage corporate egos, balance relationships with competing interests and sometimes—and quite necessarily—act as a therapist for a client when they just need someone to listen and hold their hand through a stinging situation.

Crisis PR firms aren’t—and in most cases can’t be—your “yes men.”

Sure, the everyday PR practitioner who writes puff pieces masked as relevant, newsworthy takes on current events to promote their client’s likely very peripheral attachment to a day-of news story is likely to give little pushback to their clients to keep them consistently happy. And this is exponentially truer today, as earned media only gets more difficult to navigate. But in a crisis, that’s the last thing you want. Even when you think you want it.

People and organizations hire crisis firms because, much of the time, they recognize that they simply don’t have the right instincts to cope with an unknowable, fast-breaking situation. Or, similarly, they doubt their instincts.

Emotions are always involved, even for the most unemotional, icy-veined corporate titans, in the midst of a real crisis and sometimes those under the glare of a hot spotlight feel a false, but still very immediate sense of urgency to say more than they should to alleviate the pressure they’re experiencing.

This is where and why crisis firms become so critical and valuable. The “outside the fishbowl” perspective is what crisis firms start with when a new matter comes through the door.

Crisis practitioners replace hot emotion with cold strategy. We see situations objectively and clearly, and with hundreds of previous crises to reference, we have enough precedent and experience on hand to start repairs with immediacy. We understand how to say no to a client. We push back constructively, in favor of serving our clients’ best optical and legal interests. We speak to boards of directors and C-Suites with calm authority, providing timely updates and explaining what they can most likely expect to experience in the days and weeks that follow a media revelation, external adversarial activity, a lawsuit or an investigation and eventual indictment.

And thus, based on experience, and having run similar scenarios over and again via related and unrelated matters, we bring clarity and predictability to the fast-breaking unknowable situation that had the client call us in the first place. With the clarity comes balance, and with balance comes emotional stability. And with emotional stability, control returns. That’s our superpower.

When I went into crisis, I thought I was entering a fast-paced, highly stressful, all-hands-on-deck, hair-on-fire environment. A bit like a newsroom, really.

But, I came to learn, it was all quite the opposite. A crisis is someone else’s worst day, not ours. We aren’t paid to panic, and we don’t have to feel the panic. We are paid to be the calm in the storm and help guide the client’s ship to safe harbor.

So, how do you know if you’re dealing with a crisis firm? Here are a few telltale signs that differentiate a crisis firm from a “PR firm that does crisis.”

No client name dropping or case studies

What I’ve learned about true crisis PR firms—the ones doing the highly sensitive work—is they don’t talk about it. And in some instances, for the sake of propriety and confidence, they can’t talk about it. Some of their best work will never be known because it never reached the public eye. Crisis PR teams are in the “war room,” so to speak, with their clients, offering real-time advice and quickly pivoting to put out—or predict—the next fire. They’re not writing case studies or boasting about those clients in their marketing and advertising. Unless asked by a client to serve as a spokesperson during a crisis, there might be no way of knowing a crisis PR team was ever involved in a matter.

Deep bench of legal expertise and law firm connections

Crisis PR pros often have deeper ties to law firms than media outlets. Based on the nature of crises, the work often intersects with legal ramifications. Whether it’s a data breach, an intellectual property dispute, an unanticipated executive exit, a DEI issue, filing for bankruptcy or any number of common issues we’re called in to handle, legal will always be involved. If you’re a true crisis PR firm, lawyers won’t be the enemy of good communication. They’ll be an asset and an ally in determining the safest path forward for the client, walking the fine line between transparency and liability. Healthy relationships and understanding between crisis experts and law firms are essential to balancing legal protection with stakeholder management.

Non-transactional reporter relationships

Any good PR pro relies on a handful of trusted journalists they can turn to for fair coverage. But typically, with crisis clients, the client either doesn’t want to be in the news, or reporters are approaching the client due to the newsworthy nature of the present circumstances. Typical exchanges include offering on-background information, providing timely, substantive responses and being as transparent as possible with clear expectations set regarding how much information you can share. Real relationships with reporters are built on trust, not by asking for a handout from some business reporter to write about your client’s “new and exciting product,” or including them as a subject matter expert on a tangentially related field to the reporter’s story. That’s how you get marked as “spam,” or your name becomes ignored in an inbox full of similar pitches from every junior PR looking to hit their media placement KPIs.

The purpose of saying all this isn’t to bash the everyday PR pro, who indeed plays a vital role on behalf of their clients. I do, however, want to emphasize the importance of understanding the type of firm you’re working with—and why and when you need to hire them. Each serves different purposes, and it’s easy to be tripped up when virtually every PR firm out there claims to “do crisis” work. Choose wisely, for your own sake.

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Maria Stagliano is Senior Vice President of Crisis & Corporate Communications at Blue Highway Advisory.