Crisis Communications

When an organization faces a crisis, its reputation, license to operate and market value are all on the line. Whether it’s a government investigation, high-stakes litigation, a cyber attack or an operational incident, we help:

• Protect your organization’s brand, valuation and reputation
• Manage the crisis through active communications
• Ensure accurate representation of facts in the media and by other third parties
• Engage with stakeholders to maintain credibility and strengthen relationships
• Reduce legal and political consequences, working closely with legal counsel and other advisors
• Ensure business continuity by managing the crisis so you can focus on managing the business

Our crisis management professionals have a deep understanding of how different types of crises can impact your organization and how to mitigate those crises. Our team is comprised of experts who have worked in-house managing crises and as outside experts, doing crisis management consulting for organizations of all sizes, in all industries and regions of the world. When you work with us, we begin with a disciplined discovery process to identify your organization’s preparedness gaps and apply best practices and real-world insights. Our goal is to prioritize your organization’s crisis preparedness and response needs that include:

• Situation assessment
• Scenario planning
• Crisis communications management plan
• Stakeholder and media engagement plan
• Communications mobilization
• Training and testing

While litigation can be a natural progression of a crisis, it nevertheless can affect a company’s business prospects, impact its standing with key stakeholders, and create reputational damage that extends beyond the direct financial implications of a lawsuit. Conversely, stakeholders can affect the course of litigation and how a case ultimately is resolved. Our team of advisors, who are involved in matters across the United States and throughout the world, helps clients prepare for and manage communications around legal issues, positioning their most persuasive arguments for their most important audiences. We seek to align our communications plan with your organization’s litigation strategy to resolve a matter with the most favorable legal, financial and reputational terms.

In providing informed, actionable counsel, we draw upon the combined power of our legal experience, industry expertise and success in senior communications roles. Our client and their outside legal advisors regard us as a trusted partner because of our deep sector knowledge, as well as our experience developed as practicing attorneys, federal prosecutors, senior U.S. Justice Department officials, federal agency communications directors, journalists, political advisors and corporate spokespeople.

We advise on areas including bet-the-company litigation, lawsuits with potentially significant reputational and/or operational impact, and the prioritization and advice on reputational risks within the litigation docket. When necessary, call on us to hold issues workshops to help you identify and prepare for potential litigation threats. Also, we help you deliver on tactical projects and initiatives, including foundational stakeholder assessment, stakeholder and opinion research, message development, media relations, third-party ally development, and digital, video and analytic services.

Cyber risk is an ever-growing threat for businesses in every sector and every part of the world. With data becoming more and more integral to day-to-day operations, the threat of a breach, ransomware attack or any other type of cybersecurity incident has never been greater. Our cybersecurity and data privacy communications experts provide you with the strategic counsel and tactical execution needed to prepare for — and navigate through — these challenging events. We’ve worked on hundreds of cybersecurity matters to help our clients minimize the impact of cyber incidents and ultimately protect their reputations and licenses to operate. You can look to us for:

• Cyber preparedness
• Incident response
• Reputation recovery

We work to help our clients understand their current vulnerabilities, most likely threats, and overall cyber incident readiness. We create executive-level protocols and a whole-of-business approach for activating incident response and crisis communications plans to minimize risks and impacts of cybersecurity incidents to the business. We also execute tabletop and simulation exercises, often in partnership with forensic, insurance and legal partners.

If called to assist you in responding to a live breach scenario, we partner with external counsel, forensic investigators, cyber insurers and your internal teams to ensure consistent and appropriate stakeholder communications across the board. We have advised organizations from Fortune 500 companies to SMEs and non-profits across all sectors and geographies to help successfully navigate business email compromise, phishing and spear phishing, DDoS, credential stuffing, nation-state, ransomware and other complex attacks involving PII, PHI and IP.

We also understand that risk mitigation and reputation management extend beyond controlling the damage in the first 48 hours after a cyber incident. Clients look to us to help them positively position the steps they take after an incident to build a culture of security in the organization, protecting their relationships with their peers, customers, employees and other key stakeholders.