Crisis Management

It’s been a week where a stolen truck full of KitKats became a brand-response masterclass, United Airlines turned government dysfunction into a customer feature, and Muck Rack dropped the data every PR pro needs to bookmark.

From an Air Canada air traffic control crisis at LaGuardia Airport, to a PR workforce stretched thin by expanding expectations, to fans rewriting the rules of live sports engagement during March Madness—this week’s PR Roundup covers timely moments and data for all communicators to learn from.

ABC must tell all it knows about what happened with casting this season’s “The Bachelorette,” no matter how bad, to reclaim trust with its viewers and advertisers.

In periods when political pressure, press attacks and media volatility rise together, communications strategy becomes an exercise in protecting trust.

PR Roundup covers Anthropic’s Claude buckling under the weight of its own viral moment, the McDonald’s CEO trying to sell America on a new burger, and a new conscious consumerism report quietly dismantles the narrative that sustainability is dead

Do not overreact to a single outage, but do use this moment to pressure‑test your dependence on TikTok as a single point of failure.

USA Hockey’s public silence at this moment isn’t just a missed opportunity. It actively risks undermining that growth by signaling to those new fans that the organization doesn’t take the women’s program seriously either.

From a crisis communications misstep on one of the entertainment industry’s biggest stages and new data showing employees now outpace CEOs in brand trust, to Burger King’s surprisingly human response to a decade of customer complaints, this week’s PR Roundup highlights the power—and pitfalls—of modern communications.

Building a modern communications stack doesn’t mean adopting every new tool. But you do need to select the right ones. To do this, brand communicators need to understand three fundamentals: voice, velocity and verification.

Build a robust crisis immune system for your organization against AI-generated risks.