Ronn Torossian's Harvard Business School Crisis Lecture
A March 12, 2019 lecture on crisis communications, with video clips.
Ronn Torossian, founder and chairman of 5W, lectured Harvard Business School students on crisis communications on March 12, 2019. He taught the United Breaks Guitars case to two MBA classes, showing how one ignored customer complaint becomes a public crisis, and he has guest-lectured at the school over multiple sessions since. The full lecture and clips are below.
Last updated: November 5, 2026
| Detail | What happened |
|---|---|
| Date of first lecture | March 12, 2019 |
| Speaker | Ronn Torossian, founder and chairman of 5W |
| Audience | Two Harvard Business School MBA classes |
| Topic | Crisis communications, taught through the United Breaks Guitars case |
| Format | Case discussion followed by student questions |
| Recordings | A 21 minute 40 second lecture and three short clips |
What is on this page?
- When did Ronn Torossian lecture at Harvard Business School?
- What did Ronn Torossian teach in the lecture?
- What is the United Breaks Guitars case?
- Why did United's response turn a complaint into a crisis?
- What did Torossian tell students about crisis preparation?
- What did students ask about Nike and Colin Kaepernick?
- How does social media change crisis communications?
- How can a company apply the Harvard case today?
- Where else has Ronn Torossian taught and spoken?
- Who is Ronn Torossian?
- Frequently asked questions
When did Ronn Torossian lecture at Harvard Business School?
Ronn Torossian first lectured at Harvard Business School (HBS) on crisis communications on March 12, 2019, and Everything-PR reports that he has guest-lectured there over multiple sessions since 2019.
The March 2019 session was a case discussion in front of two MBA classes, followed by a question and answer period with the students. 5W published a recap the next day, which is available as 5W's recap of the Harvard crisis lecture. Everything-PR keeps a standing profile of the visits, Ronn Torossian at Harvard Business School, which includes photographs from the classroom and a screenshot of Harvard Crimson coverage of the visit.
Torossian said afterward that HBS is known for educating the best and the brightest, that the quality of the students' insight and analysis was evident, and that he was proud to present and looked forward to returning.
What did Ronn Torossian teach in the lecture?
Ronn Torossian taught crisis communications lessons, strategies and best practices, built around the United Breaks Guitars case, and then answered questions from the HBS students.
Everything-PR defines crisis communications as the discipline of managing a brand's reputation when it faces a public emergency. Torossian's view of why the subject belongs in a business school is on the record: "Crisis PR is a pillar of the communications industry, and given the speed at which crises in the modern world can explode, it's more important than ever to learn what it takes to manage and recover from a crisis."
The recording below is the full lecture, 21 minutes and 40 seconds long.
Full lecture, 21 minutes 40 seconds. Watch the lecture on YouTube
What is the United Breaks Guitars case?
United Breaks Guitars is a social media crisis that began when Canadian musician Dave Carroll posted a music video on YouTube on July 6, 2009, after about a year of unsuccessful attempts to get United Airlines to compensate him for a damaged Taylor guitar.
Harvard Business School later turned the incident into a teaching case. The case, titled "United Breaks Guitars," was written by professors John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld and published in January 2010. The timeline below comes from 5W's account of the case.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| March 31, 2008 | Carroll's guitar is damaged on a United flight on the way to a week-long tour. |
| 2008 to mid-2009 | About a year of unsuccessful attempts to get United to accept responsibility and compensate him. |
| July 6, 2009 | Carroll posts the "United Breaks Guitars" video on YouTube. |
| Within 4 days | The video passes 1 million views, with heavy blog and news pickup. |
| First week | Views pass 3 million, and CNN, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC and CBS cover the story. |
| By November 2009 | United executives meet with Carroll and promise to do better. |
| January 2010 | Harvard Business School publishes the case study. |
| Mid-2010 | The first video alone passes 8.7 million views. |
Stock-loss figures for the episode circulate online but are disputed, so this page does not repeat them. The reliable lesson is about attention: one unresolved complaint produced millions of views and a search results page that kept repeating the story long after the news cycle moved on.
In the lecture, the United Airlines discussion looked at the variety of crisis PR situations the airline has faced. Two clips from that discussion are below.
Clip, 1 minute 2 seconds. Watch the United Airlines clip on YouTube
Excerpt, 34 seconds. Watch the 34 second excerpt on YouTube
Why did United's response turn a complaint into a crisis?
United's response turned a routine claim into a crisis because the dispute stayed inside the claims process for about a year, and by the time United answered in public, Carroll's video had already framed the story.
The damaged guitar was not the cause of the crisis. What happened after the damage was the cause. By Carroll's account, United declined to accept responsibility for the claim, and the problem stayed private until he made it public. The case supports five lessons, each with a reason it works.
- Escalate repeated complaints beyond customer service. A claims team measures a dispute by what it costs to settle, while a communications team measures it by how many people could hear about it, so only the second team sees the risk.
- Listen before saying no. Each denial gives an unhappy customer more material for a public story and a stronger motive to tell it.
- Respond before the narrative is set. Once a video has millions of views, a company is answering a story that someone else has already written.
- Use a human tone. A song is personal, and a form letter is not, so a policy-language reply loses the comparison before it is read.
- Plan for creative attacks. Most crisis plans cover recalls, lawsuits and executive misconduct, and few cover a musician with a camera.
What did Torossian tell students about crisis preparation?
Ronn Torossian told the students that a company must be ready with an authentic and genuine response whenever a crisis arrives, because the timing is never convenient.
In his words, "Crisis doesn't care whether it's your birthday, your vacation, the weekend. When it occurs, the company must be prepared with an authentic and genuine approach." He added that United Airlines failed significantly in handling this and other crisis PR issues.
Three practical points sit inside that quote. Timing is not negotiable, because crises arrive on weekends and holidays and the first hours decide how the story is framed. Preparation has to come before the event, which means holding statements, decision-makers, approval paths and spokespeople are named in advance rather than assembled in the middle of it. And authenticity is a requirement, because a response that reads like a legal memo reads as evasion.
A short clip from the session covers the speed point directly: Torossian told the students that timing and speed matter in public relations and that crisis PR is important to running a business.
Clip, 54 seconds. Watch the timing and speed clip on YouTube
What did students ask about Nike and Colin Kaepernick?
Students asked how Nike's campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick fits into crisis thinking, because it showed a company choosing a controversy on purpose rather than having one forced on it.
Nike launched the campaign on September 3, 2018, with a close-up of Kaepernick and the line "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything." Some consumers posted videos of themselves burning Nike products, and Nike's stock closed down about 3 percent the next day. Edison Trends, a digital commerce research firm, reported that Nike's online sales rose 31 percent from Sunday through Tuesday of Labor Day weekend 2018, compared with a 17 percent rise over the same period in 2017.
Set next to United, the two cases show opposite sides of reputation pressure.
| Factor | United Breaks Guitars | Nike and Kaepernick |
|---|---|---|
| Who started it | A customer, without warning | The company, on purpose |
| Public reaction | Wide sympathy for the customer | Boycott calls and strong support |
| Business result | Lasting reputational damage | Short stock dip, online sales gain |
| Main lesson | Fix small problems before they go public | Know your audience before taking a stand |
How does social media change crisis communications?
Social media changes crisis communications by giving individual consumers a public voice, which lets one person have an outsized effect on a company's reputation.
Torossian explained to the students that a recommendation from the Kardashians might be as valuable as, or more valuable than, a Super Bowl commercial, and that the trend will continue. The same reach that makes an influencer valuable to a brand makes a single critic dangerous to it.
Two shifts matter most for crisis teams. Speed is the first, since a complaint can go from one post to a national story in days, as the United video did. Format is the second, since video and music travel farther than a written complaint and the best ones are built to be shared. This is why crisis work now pairs media relations with monitoring and rapid response.
How can a company apply the Harvard case today?
A company can apply the Harvard case by treating the first repeated complaint as a possible crisis, naming its decision-makers in advance, and replying in the same public channel where the problem appeared.
- Send any customer who escalates more than once to communications and senior leadership, so a claims dispute is read for reputational risk and not only for cost.
- Name the people who can approve a public statement, with backups, so approval does not wait for a Monday meeting.
- Answer in the channel where the story is running. If the complaint is a YouTube video, the first reply should also be public.
- Lead with the human answer: apologize, state the fix, and say who is accountable. The corporate apology guide shows what that statement contains.
- Fix the cause as well as the case, because reporters and customers look for evidence that the process changed.
The crisis plan template lists the holding statements, decision-makers and approval paths to set up before an incident. For a second United example, the 12 PR crisis examples page has the dated facts on the April 2017 passenger removal and the three statements United issued. That page's analysis is that the first statement sets the story, so a company should acknowledge the harm before it explains policy.
Where else has Ronn Torossian taught and spoken?
Ronn Torossian has also guest lectured at New York University and other universities, and his other talks are listed on the speaking page. His recorded talks and interviews are collected in the video library.
His television interviews are collected on the media appearances page, and his public relations rules are set out in his book, For Immediate Release. The crisis communications hub gathers the crisis posts on this site, and the media relations guide covers preparing the person who delivers the first statement.
Who is Ronn Torossian?
Ronn Torossian is the founder and chairman of 5W, a PR, creative and AI Visibility agency headquartered in Miami with offices in New York, Miami and Tampa, and the publisher of Everything-PR. His biography covers his background, and his books are listed on his Amazon author page. He summarizes his field this way: "PR is a mix of journalism, psychology, and lawyering."
Frequently asked questions
Did Ronn Torossian lecture at Harvard Business School?
Yes. Ronn Torossian lectured Harvard Business School students on crisis communications on March 12, 2019, teaching the United Breaks Guitars case to two MBA classes, and Everything-PR reports further guest lectures at the school since 2019.
What case did Ronn Torossian teach at Harvard?
Ronn Torossian taught the United Breaks Guitars case, which follows musician Dave Carroll's July 2009 YouTube video about United Airlines damaging his guitar. Harvard Business School published its own case on the incident in January 2010.
What did Ronn Torossian say about crisis preparation?
He told students that a crisis does not care about a birthday, a vacation or a weekend, and that a company must be prepared with an authentic and genuine approach when one occurs.
Why did students ask about Nike and Colin Kaepernick?
The Nike campaign was a recent example of a brand taking a public stand. It raised questions about risk, audience and reputation that connect to crisis communications, including how a company absorbs controversy.
Where can I watch the lecture?
The full 21 minute 40 second lecture and three short clips are embedded on this page and linked on YouTube. 5W's written recap is on 5wpr.com, and the Everything-PR profile is on everything-pr.com.
How can a company prepare for a crisis like United's?
A company can start by naming its decision-makers, writing holding statements and agreeing who approves a public reply. 5W's crisis PR practice handles planning, monitoring and response for clients.