What is the difference between crisis communications and crisis reputation management?
Crisis communications shapes what is said to stakeholders and the press. Crisis reputation management shapes the durable digital record those efforts produce - the SERP, the AI narrative, the Wikipedia article.
PR firms run crisis communications: the statement, the press strategy, the executive interviews, the stakeholder calls. We run crisis reputation management: the parallel work to ensure that what stakeholders find when they go look – on Google, in ChatGPT, in the Wikipedia article – actually reflects the message the comms team is putting out, and not the version the contested article wants to tell. The two functions are complementary and work best when they are coordinated from the first call. A statement that does not also exist in citable form on the corporate site rarely makes it into the AI engines. A press placement that the SERP does not show above the contested article does not get seen by the people the comms team was trying to reach.
Last reviewed: 19/05/2026
