This year’s Cairns Crocodiles delivered a smorgasbord of tasty content, but few sessions were more crucial for brands than day three’s When The Shit Hits The Fan panel, writes Richie Kenzie, Budd Communications’ Australia lead.
Given the highly digitised, AI-led world businesses are now grappling with, the likelihood of ending up in hot water at some point is near inevitable. So how best to mitigate the seemingly innumerable threats we face?
On hand to help was a crack panel of crisis experts, divvying out their advice and providing the leadership decisions that make or break a crisis. Deftly acting as both moderator and panelist was Celia Harding, founder of LEOPRD—an AI-reputation advisory. She was joined on stage by Andrew Knowles, co-founder and partner at SKMG.
Also providing her counsel from afar was Bud Communications’ Patricia Malay—who wasn’t going to let a snafu with travel arrangements and an inability to be there in person keep her from sharing the wisdom she’s gained over 20 years in crisis comms.
The panel kicked off with a discussion around the anatomy of a crisis and how businesses can stop something relatively minor from turning into a PR disaster.
Knowles compared crisis escalation to a fire, saying “there’s a lot of things that will determine whether or not the entire building goes up in flames, or whether it’s just alight for a couple of minutes.” The “kindling,” he explained, is the organisation’s pre-existing reputation, culture and preparedness before the crisis escalates.
Companies that have built trust and credibility are almost always better positioned to withstand scrutiny when problems arise. “Too many businesses start acting on a crisis when it happens,” Knowles said. Instead, he believes organisations should focus on “proactive reputation management – not targeted at if, but when, a crisis happens”.
The rise of AI has also fundamentally changed the speed and permanence of crisis communications. Harding explained that many existing communications plans are built around conventional news cycles and do not account for how AI platforms interpret and distribute information.
LEOPRD’s Reputation to Revenue Report found that 62 per cent of brand mentions in AI are driven by third-party sources, not brand-owned content, reinforcing why the trust you build before a crisis is often what AI systems draw on during one.
Traditionally, she said, crisis management focused on stakeholders such as customers, investors and journalists. Now, AI systems themselves have become intermediaries that influence how those groups receive information.
“AI is now a responder. Before reading a company statement or news article, many people are asking AI tools for answers,” Harding said.
“The first 24-48 hours are often critical for breaking news and reputation management because that’s when stories spread, get syndicated and discussed online. But AI systems are also heavily influenced by the longer-term third-party content. AI reputation is cumulative rather than purely reactive. Each AI model has a different personality and draws on different sources to generate an answer,” she added.
Malay believes that within those 48 hours brands must be calm and proactive. “When you are reactive, you are entirely at the mercy of the news cycle, social media algorithms and public speculation. You end up making high stakes decisions under intense duress, which is a recipe for disaster,” Malay said.
“Proactive crisis management means simply executing a well-rehearsed plan. It preserves trust with stakeholders because it shows you are accountable,” she added.
From Knowles’ point of view the window to act is much shorter. “The business needs to be able to isolate, lock a strategy and begin executing in the first five minutes of a crisis breaking,” he said.
“This is where the established culture of the business supports the crisis strategy, because when a storm hits, people need to have trust in who is steering the ship,” he added.
Preparation also extends far beyond communications teams. Knowles stressed the importance of organisation-wide readiness, where key employees understand how to respond during high-pressure moments.
“Every business should have four or five people who are the immediate port of call,” he outlined, while frontline staff should also know how to escalate issues and respond calmly if they are suddenly filmed or confronted publicly.
Having people prepared is something Malay also believes in strongly. “My best advice is to first establish a clear chain of command. You must know exactly who sits on the crisis response team, who signs off on messaging and who is the sole spokesperson.
“Secondly, build template playbooks. You cannot predict the exact crisis, but you can predict the types of crises, like data breaches, leadership scandals or product failures. Have holding statements and operational protocols drafted and ready to tailor. Finally, run fire drills, including live simulations with your executive team at least once a year and put them under pressure – so the first time they experience it is not in front of a live microphone,” she said.
Another way to build trust before a crisis is through leadership visibility, particularly across owned channels such as LinkedIn, which are becoming increasingly influential to how AI systems absorb and amplify public narratives.
“Yet we see a lot of CEOs and senior leaders shying away from building a personal brand. But if you don’t feed the narrative, someone else will,” Harding warns.
Building trust is especially important for brands operating in high-risk sectors, for example, telecommunications which has experienced several high profile cyber attacks recently.
“Rather than relying on bold marketing claims, telecommunications businesses should subtly reinforce trust and responsibility over time to create a ‘goodwill bank’ that can protect the brand during difficult periods,” Knowles explained.
Which is exactly why, when a crisis does hit, speed and transparency are integral. Particularly in a digital-first financial landscape, where silence is often interpreted as guilt, as opposed to swift, honest clarity, which builds a strong bond with the audience.
Malay shared an example involving a disruptive fintech brand that was hit by a sudden, highly publicised regulatory misunderstanding and market panic that threatened to trigger a run on funds.
“We immediately activated a strategy rooted in radical transparency and rapid response. Instead of retreating behind corporate jargon, we established a direct communication channel to address customer anxieties and continuously updated the market. But by demonstrating total accountability the brand actually flipped the narrative, validating its integrity to the market,” Malay said.
For senior leaders, the takeaways here should be fairly evident. Crisis preparation will be your best defence—especially in an AI-first era. All three panellists unanimously agreed on one thing: when the ground shifts, you better be ready.
