This library collects named crisis communications case studies by industry, each with the event, the response and the lesson. Use it to find the closest precedent for a crisis, then use the guides below to draft the statement, the apology and the plan. The doctrine sits on the crisis communications guide, and unnamed scenarios sit on Reputation Management Case Studies.
Crisis communications runs on two clocks. The news cycle runs in hours and days. The record runs for years: filings, coverage and statements stay searchable long after the news cycle closes. The cases below show how the two clocks play out in practice.
Related coverage: Everything-PR crisis communications coverage. Master pillar index at ronntorossian.com/pillars. Cases about celebrities and athletes live in the Celebrity PR and Sports PR pillars.
Start here: the rebuilt case studies
These case studies were rebuilt with dated facts and named sources, and each ends with the lessons a crisis team can use.
- 12 PR Crisis Examples and What Each Teaches (2026), twelve cases with one lesson each
- Domino's Pizza Turnaround: The 2009 Crisis and Comeback
- Publix Public Relations: Lessons From the 2018 Backlash
- Aggressive Crisis PR: Current TV vs. Olbermann
- Vatican Bank PR: A Decade of Reputation Repair
- Delta Airlines 2016 Outage: A Crisis PR Case Study
- The Wells Fargo Crisis: A Timeline Case Study
- British Airways 2017 IT Failure: A Crisis Case Study
- Amtrak 188 Derailment: A Crisis Communications Case
- AT&T Unlimited Data Price Hike: A Crisis PR Case Study
Guides, templates and plans
- Crisis Communication Plan Template: 10 Parts and Examples
- Crisis Statement Template: Five Fill-In Versions to Copy
- How to Write a Crisis Statement in Seven Steps
- Corporate Apology: Five Parts That Hold Up Under Scrutiny
- Product Recall Communications: Rules, Steps and Cases
- When Is a Crisis Over? Seven Signals and the Long Tail
- The Art of Saying No Comment Strategically
- Handling Untrue Rumors About Your Brand
- Setting Up a Crisis Communication Slack Channel
- How to Choose a Crisis PR Firm: Eight Questions to Ask
Speaking, teaching and thought leadership
- Torossian Teaches United Breaks Guitars at Harvard
- Ronn Torossian at Harvard Business School (Everything-PR)
Banking and financial services
- UBS CEO Resignation 2011: The Adoboli Crisis Response
- The Wells Fargo Crisis: A Timeline Case Study
- Capital One Data Breach 2019: Response, Fines, Lessons
- Banking PR: Crisis, Trust and Reputation in Finance
- Financial Services Crisis Communications (Everything-PR), from Wells Fargo to FTX to SVB
- Silicon Valley Bank Collapse Communications (Everything-PR)
Automotive
- Toyota Recall Crisis 2010: Six Communication Errors
- GM Ignition Switch Recall: Crisis Communications Lessons
- Product Recall Communications: Rules, Steps and Cases
- Ford CEO Major PR Problem (Everything-PR)
Airline and travel
- United Airlines 2017 Crisis: What the Response Got Wrong
- British Airways 2017 IT Failure: A Crisis Case Study
- British Airways 2018 Data Breach: The Security Playbook
- Delta Airlines 2016 Outage: A Crisis PR Case Study
- Amtrak 188 Derailment: A Crisis Communications Case
- Cathay Pacific Crew Crisis 2022: What the Record Shows
- Carnival Cruise Lines and the Costa Concordia Crisis
- Airline Public Relations: How Airlines Manage Reputation, the airline pillar
Retail and consumer
- Domino's Pizza Turnaround: The 2009 Crisis and Comeback
- Publix Public Relations: Lessons From the 2018 Backlash
- Chili's Veteran Backlash: A Restaurant Crisis PR Case
- Target Data Breach
- Starbucks PR: Digital Strategy, Crisis and Loyalty Data
- Chipotle Crisis: What Three Years Reveal About Brand Trust
- Burger King Impossible Whopper Ad Ban: A Disclosure Case
- Pizza Hut PR: Brand Identity Crisis
- Consumer PR Crises That Spun Out of Control
- Consumer Brand Crisis Communications (Everything-PR)
Technology, cybersecurity and founders
- OpenAI Apology in Australia: The Cost of Late Disclosure
- BlackBerry: Narrative Identity Collapse
- BlackBerry PR Firm Consolidation in 2013: What Happened
- Cybersecurity Crisis PR: The 72-Hour Breach Playbook
- Fastly and CrowdStrike Outages: Vendor Crisis PR Lessons
- Facebook, Google and Burson-Marsteller: The 2011 PR Crisis
- Technology Communications (Everything-PR), covering breach-response cases including Equifax, T-Mobile, PayPal, MOVEit, MGM and Change Healthcare
- Cybersecurity Communications (Everything-PR), covering breach response, threat-intelligence communications and government cybersecurity communications
Cannabis
- Cannabis Communications in 2026: Stigma Reversal to Strategy, the cannabis pillar
- Cannabis Crisis Communications 2026: Recalls, IRS, Backlash
- EPR Cannabis (Everything-PR)
Media, institutions and public figures
- Aggressive Crisis PR: Current TV vs. Olbermann
- Harvard Latest University to Respond to PR Fire
- Vatican Bank PR: A Decade of Reputation Repair
Celebrity and sports crises have their own pillars
Cases about named people and teams are indexed in two pillars so that this library stays focused on organizations. The Celebrity PR pillar covers Kanye West, Mike Tyson, Hillary Clinton, the Stephen A. Smith apology and others. The Sports PR pillar covers the Astros sign-stealing scandal, the USOC and Larry Nassar, Russia and WADA, the Olympic cycle, and the NFL cases in the NFL PR guide.
The crisis archive across 23 years
Crisis cases are grouped below by era. The master through-line lives at 23 Years of Communications Thinking.
- 2010-2013 archive: Goldman Sachs, Aurora, Lululemon, OfficeMax, UPS holiday timing, GoldieBlox versus Beastie Boys, the Slipper-Ashby case
- 2014-2016 archive: Volkswagen Dieselgate, Chipotle E. coli, Wells Fargo accounts, OfficeMax-Seay, the foundational Anchor Event cases
- 2017-2019 archive: United Airlines and Dr. David Dao, Uber-Khosrowshahi, Wells Fargo compounding, Chipotle rebuild, Sony Peter Rabbit
- 2020-2022 archive: COVID corporate response, racial-justice statements, Capitol divestments, supply chain, Twitter under Musk
- 2023-2026 archive: The current playbooks, primary research, founding pillars
Cross-property reference
- Crisis Communications: Definition, Plan and Case Library, the guide that explains the field
- Everything-PR Crisis Communications, the companion publication
- Sister pillars on this site: PR Rules, Reputation Management, Media Relations and Brand Strategy
- 23 Years of Communications Thinking, the 23-year arc
Edited October 2026. Link labels match the rebuilt page titles, and links to pages that no longer exist were removed.