PR crises need a fast, honest response. The failure mode is either silence (looks evasive) or over-response (creates new stories). This workflow produces a one-pager in 30 minutes that gives your team a shared truth to work from.
Fact base
Goal: The specific facts, separated from interpretations.
Crisis: [describe what happened]. Extract from all sources [paste]: what we know as fact (verifiable), what's interpretation, what's speculation. Separate each category. Do NOT add opinion.
Response draft
Goal: The response text — brief, honest, addresses the specific concern.
Given the fact base above, draft a response statement. Include: acknowledgment (specific), what we know, what we're doing, what we don't know yet, when we'll update. 200 words max. No corporate-speak. No 'thoughts and prayers.'
Distribution plan
Goal: Where the statement goes, who owns each channel, order of operations.
Given the response above, distribution plan: what channel first, what channel next, what channel not-yet. Who owns each. Timing. Include: internal team briefing, direct-to-affected-customers, public statement, media response.
Repeatability, not cleverness.
What lives where when the workflow finishes.
Document the crisis + response + timeline for post-mortem review at T+14 days. What worked, what didn't, what to change in the crisis playbook.
The same shape, different jobs.
- Internal-only crisis: skip public statement, distribute internal-only message via slack + email.
- Recurring incident: reference prior similar events explicitly; audiences notice when you use identical language.
Try this workflow once. Then decide if it earns a recurring slot.
The value compounds after the third run, not the first.