PR Crisis Management: 8 Essential Steps and Real-World Examples, 2025

PR Crisis Management: 8 Essential Steps and Real-World Examples in 2025

Discover the essential steps to prepare for, navigate, and recover from a PR crisis in 2025. Explore real-life examples and access a free checklist.

June 4, 2025

Table of contents

PR crises can damage your brand’s reputation in minutes.

They might happen to any company: whether it’s a major data breach, a product recall, employee misconduct, or a social media post gone wrong.

Because of social media, no business is too small (or too niche) to need a PR crisis management plan.

The key? Delivering the right response, because how you react determines whether you bounce back quickly or suffer lasting damage.

This guide outlines the essential steps to prepare for, navigate, and recover from a PR crisis in 2025.

What is public relations (PR) crisis management?

PR crisis management means protecting your company's reputation when facing a public emergency.

It's a systematic approach to identify threats, prepare responses, and communicate effectively during crisis situations.

The goal? Maintaining stakeholder trust and minimizing long-term reputation damage.

What is a PR crisis management plan?

A PR crisis management plan is a documented strategy that outlines exactly how your organization will respond during a reputation emergency.

It clearly outlines who does what, how they do it, and when, so your team can respond quickly and consistently when a crisis hits.

Effective crisis management plans include:

A standout example of crisis management is how Starbucks responded when two Black men were wrongfully arrested at a Philadelphia store in 2018. Instead of downplaying it, the CEO publicly apologized, met with the men in person, and closed 8,000 stores for racial bias training.

It was fast, transparent, and action-driven—exactly what a strong crisis response should look like.

Let’s see how managing PR crises works in practice.

How to manage a PR crisis in 8 steps

When a PR crisis hits, you need a clear roadmap to follow.

Here's your step-by-step action plan.

1. Track brand mentions and sentiment

Most PR crises show warning signs before they explode. Regular monitoring gives you time to prepare, react proactively, and prevent social media crises from escalating.

It’s best to use specialized social listening tools to catch important mentions and trends in real time.

Make sure to track:

Modern tools like Talkwalker let you set this up once and see every conversation happening about your brand across online and offline channels.

You can then track online sentiment in real time and detect crisis indicators as they happen.

Whenever you spot concerning patterns or potential issues, immediately move to the next step: determining whether you're facing a genuine crisis that requires action.

2. Classify the crisis situation

From here, evaluate whether you're facing a genuine crisis that requires immediate action. A true crisis situation goes beyond regular online reputation management issues and typically includes:

For example, an unhappy customer complaining about Delta’s customer service is not a major crisis and can be handled via routine

tool to evaluate the response. Here’s what to track if you’re using a tool like Talkwalker:

Set up a quick rhythm of updates to your crisis management team and to the public: e.g., every hour during the first day if it's serious. For example, Chipotle’s social media team often posts frequent updates when the brand faces food safety issues.

Finally, make yourself easy to reach:

8. Follow up with real actions

Words alone don't resolve a crisis. This is where many brands stumble: they make promises but fail to deliver meaningful change.

To be effective, your crisis response must include concrete actions that address the root cause of the problem. Simply saying "we're working on it" isn't enough unless you:

For complex issues, create and publish a transparent timeline showing progressive steps to keep stakeholders informed and demonstrate your commitment. Boeing’s approach during the 737 Max grounding and safety crisis (2019–2020) is a great example. The company created and published a detailed, transparent timeline outlining the sequence of incidents, ongoing investigations, and corrective actions, which was then regularly updated.

Finally, as the immediate crisis subsides:

PR crisis management checklist

Use this quick checklist to cross out the action items during a potential public relations crisis.

Before a crisis hits

During a crisis

After a crisis

3 real-life PR management examples

Finally, let’s look at three real-world PR crises from recent years and how brands handled them under pressure.

1. Balenciaga’s teddy bear controversy

In November 2022, Balenciaga launched an advertising campaign featuring children holding teddy bears dressed in what appeared to be bondage gear. The campaign immediately sparked outrage across social media, with many accusing the luxury brand of sexualizing children and promoting inappropriate content.

Response:

Aftermath:

Balenciaga lost approximately 100,000 Instagram followers, fell out of the Lyst Index's top 10 fashion brands, and saw a significant decline in sales. The delayed response demonstrated how failing to acknowledge responsibility promptly can damage brand image.

2. Glasgow’s failed Willy Wonka experience

In 2024, House of Illuminati organized a "Willy's Chocolate Experience" in Glasgow, Scotland, charging up to £35 per ticket. The event promised an immersive wonderland with chocolate fountains, giant mushrooms, and Oompa Loompas. Instead, attendees found a sparse warehouse with minimal decorations, no chocolate, and confused actors given AI-generated scripts. Upset parents called the police when children began crying.

Response:

Aftermath:

The disaster went viral worldwide, inspiring memes, parodies, documentaries, and even plans for a movie. The company faced severe public ridicule, and a Facebook group with 4,000+ members called "House of Illuminati scam" was formed. The event became a cautionary tale about over-promising, under-delivering, and relying too heavily on AI-generated content without proper execution.

3. Delta’s upside-down plane landing incident

Source: NBC news

On February 17, 2025, Delta Connection Flight 4819 from Minneapolis to Toronto experienced a catastrophic landing accident. During severe winter weather, the aircraft's right landing gear fractured upon touchdown, causing the plane to flip upside down and catch fire on the runway. All 80 people aboard survived, but 21 were injured, with three critically.

Response:

Aftermath:

Unlike many corporate crisis response examples, Delta's swift, transparent, and generous approach was widely praised by media relations experts. The compensation was seen as both a gesture of goodwill and a smart PR strategy. This proactive approach helped minimize the fallout and preserve customer loyalty, though the airline still faced ongoing scrutiny during the investigation.

PR crisis management: The bottom line

The steps and examples we've covered show that effective crisis management requires preparation, quick thinking, and genuine accountability.

The most successful companies transform crises into opportunities to demonstrate their character.

Whether it's KFC's humorous apology or Delta's transparent compensation, successful crisis communication strategies share common elements:

The key? Listening to what people are saying about your business in real time and providing an instant response.