Why Traditional PR tactics fail when your Reputation is on the line ..
Beyond Press Releases: Effective Crisis Communications in 2026:
Ask anyone who who has gone through a bonefide crisis situation where it seemed as though their whole world was coming to an end, you cannot run a crisis management response using traditional PR alone and this is something that many do not fully understand.
Crisis management is such a delicate and complex situation that traditional PR tactics will not cut it.
You would have to do a thorough and comprehensive stakeholder mapping to identify who the key interests and influences in the conversation are and what needs to be done to de-escalate the situation and to ethically and sustainably respond and resolve.
Why does traditional PR fail in crisis situations?
It is inadequate for many reasons
- Real-Life Problem Solving: If there are real life issues on the ground that need to be resolved, then merely issuing a press release as a statement of intent would be seen as grossly insufficient. In such a situation, a press release should merely be part of an integrated action to resolve, remediate, pacify or do whatever is needed to quell the source of the agitation from source.
- Social Media: Crisis management by press release is also sometimes ineffective if the conversation is blowing up on social media and is dangerously out of control in those spaces. In such situation, merely releasing a press statement would not be enough.
For instance if there was a very bad incident that took place in a facility and there are hundreds of videos on Tiktok, youtube, instagram and twitter showing a very negative narrative; you can issue a hundred press releases and it would make no difference. A picture is worth a thousand words. The only way to counter the misinformation from those images is to release authentic images of your own that can be independently verified and credibly debunk the misinformation campaign.
21st century crisis management requires a very nuanced and integrated response that takes a big look at 3 things:
- CONTEXT – What is happening? It is very important to understand what exactly is happenning because if you make a mistake in this area, you are likely to either overlook what should not be ignored or even worse overreact and make things even worse. Geting the right expert advice to frame the context of what is happening from an external perspective is actually the starting point to effective crisis management and communications response.
- IMPACT – How bad is it? In what spaces internally and externally has damage occured? What is the scale of the threat to our reputation, social license to operate? How do our key stakeholders feel about this? How is this impacting our business reality and future on a fundamental level?
- DE-ESCALATE – What should be done to immediately de-escalate and provide some space while we work on progressively resolving the issues? The primary goal should be to immediately de-escalate the situation and often it takes a whole lot more than press releases to achieve this.
PR-speak can backfire in Crisis Communications
All of the above requires a whole lot more than just a traditional PR response. In fact in a crisis, the worst thing you can do is to become promotional and communicate in PR-speak. The content, tone and language of response must be appropriate for the context, circumstances and situation.
This is why traditional PR is not a very effective approach for crisis manaegment. Traditional (old school PR) focuses on making the Brand look good. It focuses on image and perception. But a crisis requires an integrated crisis communications response which may require some level of transparency and authenticity depending on the situation.
Not knowing when PR ends and Strategic Communications should begin has been the bane of many ineffective and poorly executed crisis management responses.
Crisis Management is best managed in Crisis Communications mode. Traditional PR has no place as an approach to managing a complex situation as it tends to distance the brand from the pain and expectations of the aggrieved. It can also come across as being tone deaf especially when sentiment is very negative. A strategic communications approach is better positioned to deploy when managing a crisis response
To learn more about crisis management, join our upcoming live online ZOOM course scheduled on July 30, 2026 with Sola Abulu as course facilitator. Register here to enrol.