Psychology of Brand & PR Crises
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$3.3 million USD
is the average cost to mid-sized firms facing PR crises. (Avaans)
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>2 hours
of course content spread across 9 modules and videos. Learn at your own pace!
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7
downloadable files, worksheets, and templates that allow you to help you prepare for and respond to a crisis.
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>97%
of previous participants in masterclasses, workshops, and executive education recommend the instructor to others.
Why this course exists.
Psychology of Brand & PR Crises teaches marketing, communications, and brand leaders what is actually happening inside the consumer's head during a crisis—the emotional and cognitive machinery of fear, blame, and trust that determines whether a brand recovers or unravels. Most crisis playbooks tell practitioners what to do (respond fast, apologize, communicate). This course explains why those moves work when they work, grounded in the psychological research behind them: why fear and anxiety produce different consumer behaviors and need different responses, why the public assigns blame the way it does, why some apologies rebuild trust and others accelerate its collapse, and why social media doesn't just report a crisis—it amplifies it.
What you’ll leave with.
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A working model of the emotional response (fear, anxiety, uncertainty) a crisis triggers in consumers, and what each one calls for in your response.
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The ability to predict how much blame the public will assign to your brand—and why—using attribution theory.
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A set of evidence-based strategies for minimizing unwarranted blame before and during a crisis.
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A research-backed framework for writing corporate apologies that actually rebuild trust, rather than corporate non-apologies that erode it further.
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An understanding of how social media doesn't just spread a crisis, but actively reshapes it through user-generated content, hashtags, and virality.
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Three fully documented brand case studies (Johnson & Johnson, Starbucks, Domino's) you can reuse when briefing leadership or pitching a response strategy.
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A completed, one-page Crisis Response Playbook for a real or hypothetical scenario of your own
You’ll want to enrol if you want to…
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... understand why the standard crisis advice works when it works—respond fast, apologize, be transparent—instead of following it on faith and hoping it lands..
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... predict how much blame the public will assign you before you've drafted a single sentence, using the same three factors consumers unconsciously run on every crisis they see.
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... know what to say in the first few hours, when the pressure to speak is highest and you don't yet have the facts—and why staying silent until you do is usually the most expensive choice available.
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... write a corporate apology that actually rebuilds trust, and recognize the specific situation where apologizing will make your position measurably worse.
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... stop reacting to every social media flare-up as though it were a crisis, and learn to tell the difference between a genuine one and a challenge that only becomes serious because you over-responded to it.
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... walk away with a finished, one-page Crisis Response Playbook built against a real scenario from your own organization—not notes you'll never reopen.