Why Speed Matters in Crisis Communications

TL; DR

• You don’t have 24 hours to respond anymore—you have 2.4 milliseconds. Waiting even an hour can cost you control of the narrative.
• If you don’t say something, someone else will. The internet will fill the void with speculation, memes, or even fake apologies that look real.
• Modern crisis prep includes white-collar crime, viral moments, executive misconduct, and employee scandals, not just natural disasters and data breaches.
• You don’t need all the facts. You need a holding statement, a designated team, owned channels ready to go, and weekend/holiday coverage.
• Your employees are watching—and talking. Tell them first. Equip them with answers. Don’t let them find out from TikTok.
• If your audience has already written your apology for you, you’ve waited too long. Take up space before misinformation does.
• Crises aren’t theoretical anymore. They’re inevitable. The best-prepared teams don’t just survive the news cycle—they shape it.

Why Speed Matters in Crisis Communications

It started, as so many crises do, with an unsuspecting board of directors and a PR team thrown into a fire on what should have been a typical day for a growing startup.

On July 16, during a Coldplay concert in Boston, a Kiss Cam landed on a man and a woman canoodling, which would normally be reason for the pair to kiss on camera. But their reaction—she buried her face and turned her back to the camera, while he ducked out of view—created an internet frenzy as amateur sleuths got to work on identifying them.

By now, most of us know the story and have probably chuckled at some of the memes and reenactments from other kiss cams in the days following (my favorite was at the Phillies game the next night).

The video of the pair’s reaction went viral fast. It was all over TikTok and Reddit. Then TMZ picked it up, and so did Page Six. There were even posts on LinkedIn (where I made a joke about the B2B marketing lessons to be had from it). It didn’t matter if it was professional or personal—everyone had something to say about it.

By midmorning the next day, the internet had already done what the internet does: speculated wildly, joked mercilessly, and filled the silence with screenshots of a supposed apology from the CEO. 

At that point, the story was everywhere. Still, no official word from the company. Not a post. Not a placeholder. Not even a “we’re looking into it.” Silence.

It wasn’t until more than 24 hours later that the company put out a statement. 

And look—there are a dozen reasons why a company might delay: lawyers, HR reviews, contracts with ethical clauses, board positions and equity, and sheer panic. But in 2025, where every phone is a camera and every meme is a news cycle, waiting a day is not caution—it’s negligence.

Welcome to the Crisis Communications Era

The Coldplay Kiss Cam may seem like a one-off viral oddity—an awkward moment caught on camera, blown out of proportion by the internet. But for communications pros, it’s something else entirely: a flashing neon warning sign that we are living in a whole new crisis communications reality.

The media cycle isn’t 24 hours anymore. It’s 2.4 milliseconds. And those milliseconds don’t wait for legal to review the holding statement. 

They fill with speculation, memes, misinformation, and (if you’re unlucky) a fake apology that looks exactly like something your team would’ve posted—had anyone actually posted anything.

Crises don’t come with calendar invites. They happen when someone hits “record” at the wrong moment. When a disgruntled employee forwards an email. When an executive forgets they’re in public—or worse, doesn’t care. When someone with a camera and a TikTok account posts a funny moment at a concert. 

These aren’t hypothetical risks. They’re expected variables. Which means crisis communications planning can’t be limited to natural disasters, fires or explosions, and data breaches anymore.

If executive misconduct, white-collar crime, or personal scandal aren’t in your scenario planning, it’s time to update the playbook.

And while a kiss cam at a concert may not be part of your threat matrix, you certainly can plan for what happens when an executive does something they shouldn’t—even if said executive is in the room during your scenario planning.

The world we live in today demands faster instincts, stronger infrastructure, and a built-in understanding that your brand’s reputation doesn’t live on your About page—it lives in public, constantly, and it’s co-authored by everyone with a camera and a cellular connection.

Crisis Communications Starts Before the Crisis

You don’t control when a crisis begins, but you do control how ready you are.

And no, “We’ll deal with it if it happens” is not a strategy. That’s wishful thinking with a news release template attached.

The brands that survive reputation-threatening moments with credibility intact? They’re not lucky. They’re prepared. Because true crisis communications starts before anything goes wrong.

That means building a proactive crisis communications plan—one that includes not only the obvious (data breach, product failure, physical disaster), but also the increasingly common executive misconduct, personal scandals with professional fallout, financial mismanagement or theft, white-collar investigations, and viral moments with unclear origins.

Take a minute right now and ask your AI tool of choice to help you brainstorm additional scenarios. I’ll bet it comes up with some things you never even considered, such as recalled products, unexpected death of an employee (we once dealt with a crisis when a security guard shot an employee at the client’s manufacturing plant), protests of your organization, whistleblowers, deepfakes, and more. The list can be endless and will help you prepare for just about anything.

Once you have your list of scenarios, ask yourself:

• Who needs to know first?
• Who approves the holding statement?
• What channels do we use?
• What do we say when we don’t yet have the full story?
• What can we prepare now to be able to move faster during a crisis?

If those answers involve more than three layers of approval and a two-day turnaround, you’re not ready.

If 24/7 monitoring isn’t in your budget, start with free tools: Set up Google Alerts for your company name and executives, use Buffer’s free tier for real-time social monitoring, or create a rotating monitoring buddy system where team members take turns checking channels during off-hours. It’s not perfect, but it’s infinitely better than finding out from your mother-in-law.

You also need to build muscle memory. Hold simulations. Have a consistent social media monitoring program. Test how quickly your team can spot, verify, and respond to something blowing up online. Create content templates that are pre-approved by legal and can be populated with the specifics. Build landing pages that are never published except when you need them. 

If you don’t have crisis communications expertise on staff, identify two to three PR consultants or agencies today—not during a crisis. Have coffee, understand their rates and availability, and keep their emergency contact info handy. Think of it like having a plumber’s number before the pipe bursts.

The first time you run a crisis drill shouldn’t be the day your CEO ends up trending on TikTok. All of this preparation will help you respond in real time and ensure the story is yours to tell.

Great crisis communications aren’t reactive—they’re predictive. They acknowledge the messy humanity behind most modern crises and build a structure to absorb the shock.

The goal isn’t to make every problem disappear; the goal is to prevent small problems from becoming existential threats.

The First Hour: A Make-or-Break Moment

If your crisis communications plan is your fire escape map, the first hour is the actual fire. This is when people are looking around for signs of leadership, clarity, and control—and if they don’t see it from you, they’ll assume the house is burning down.

The first hour isn’t about having all the facts. It’s about showing up. It’s about presence. And in most cases, all you need is one sentence, “We’re aware of the situation and are actively reviewing it. We will provide updates every hour, so please check back.”

That’s it. You’re not confirming. You’re not denying. You’re not issuing a legal treatise. You’re simply letting the world (and your employees) know that the company is alive, engaged, and not waiting for TMZ to publish the first draft of the narrative.

But that kind of speed doesn’t happen by accident. You need:

• A pre-authorized response team empowered to speak without waiting for the full board to weigh in.
• Weekend and holiday coverage—crises love Friday afternoons and holiday weekends. We once had a crisis hit on Thanksgiving morning, as I was elbows up in a turkey’s cavity. A crisis doesn’t care that it’s a holiday. Who has decision-making authority when the CEO is unreachable? Document it now. 
• A set of pre-cleared templates for different scenarios (including “executive behavior under scrutiny”).
• Immediate access to your owned channels: website, LinkedIn, internal comms platforms, and brand social accounts.
• A designated spokesperson and media contact—no scrambling to figure out who talks to the media.

And remember: if you’re not talking, someone else is. That could be a competitor, a former employee, or a random Reddit thread with surprising reach.

Speed is often framed as a threat to accuracy. But in crisis communications, speed protects accuracy because it lets you set the tone before misinformation takes over.

The goal of the first hour isn’t to solve the crisis. It’s to stabilize the narrative long enough to buy the next hour.

Don’t Let a Moment Become a Movement

Most crises don’t start as crises. They start as issues—awkward, uncomfortable, maybe embarrassing—but manageable. 

The longer a brand stays silent or slow, the more that moment calcifies into something bigger: a pattern, a scandal, a symbol. And once that happens, you’re not just cleaning up a situation—you’re defending your integrity.

This is how reputational damage compounds.

• A video goes viral.
• A fake apology fills the void.
• Your employees are left in the dark.
• People start pulling receipts.
• Now it’s a thread. Then it’s a theme. Then it’s your brand story.

Crises escalate when brands ignore the early signs, assume it’ll blow over, or aren’t prepared to make a statement instead of planning for blowback.

Here’s how to stop the spiral:

• Don’t dismiss it just because it started as “a joke.” Some of the biggest PR disasters of the last decade began as memes. Remember when everyone wanted to throw out their Crock Pots because of how Jack died in This Is Us? Crock Pot had a real issue on their hands the day after that episode aired—and it wasn’t even a real thing with real people! Had they dismissed it, it could have ended very badly for them. 
• Different platforms demand different responses. A LinkedIn statement reads like corporate speak on TikTok, while a casual Instagram story feels flippant on traditional media. Know your channels and adapt your tone accordingly, but keep your core message consistent.
• Address misinformation quickly and clearly. Correct the record on your owned channels. And don’t be afraid to say, “That post going around? Not real.” Just make sure you say it immediately, not hours or days later.
• Talk to your people. Internal comms is your early-warning radar and your credibility anchor. If your team doesn’t trust you during a crisis, no one else will either.
• Know when to escalate. Not every issue needs a news conference, but pretending something isn’t serious when the public clearly thinks it is will only inflame it.

A moment only becomes a movement if you leave it untended long enough for others to shape it into something bigger.

So monitor the memes. Track the tone. Don’t forget ‘dark social’—private Slack channels, WhatsApp groups, Discord servers, and industry forums where crises often simmer before boiling over publicly. 

Assign team members to keep a pulse on these spaces where your stakeholders gather. And most of all, respond like you’re already in the story—because you are.

Internal Comms Is Crisis Communications

As you monitor what’s happening externally, don’t ignore your internal audience. You can’t expect the public to trust you if your own people find out about the crisis from the internet, with the rest of the world.

Yet that’s exactly what happens far too often: the external narrative spins out of control, and employees are left refreshing Slack or Teams, wondering when—if—leadership will acknowledge what’s happening. Meanwhile, someone’s aunt has already texted them the TMZ article.

Here’s the thing: your employees aren’t just bystanders. They’re stakeholders. They’re brand ambassadors. They’re on the front lines answering questions from customers, partners, and maybe even their own families. If they don’t know what’s going on—or worse, if they feel like the last to know—they’ll start writing their own scripts. And they may not be kind.

So let’s say this plainly: internal comms is not a separate track in a crisis communications plan—it’s the foundation.

Here are some best practices: 

• Alert your employees before you say anything publicly. Even if all you can say is “We’re looking into it,” say it to them first.
• Equip people with messaging. Not a full-blown FAQ, but enough so they don’t panic or misrepresent the situation. 
• Ensure they know the process to follow should someone ask them questions. You typically want one or two people to speak on behalf of the company, so equip everyone else with responses should they be asked. 
• Ensure everyone knows the policy on their personal social media, too. It’s often to share official statements only, direct questions to designated spokespeople, and resist the urge to defend or explain on personal platforms.
• Create safe spaces for internal dialogue. People will have questions. Let them ask. Better inside your walls than in a viral screenshot.
• Reinforce your values. This is the time to show what your company stands for.

When comms teams silo internal from external response, they lose credibility where it matters most. Because if your employees don’t believe you’re handling it well, no one else will either.

The Comms Vacuum Doesn’t Stay Empty

In a perfect world, facts would set the narrative. But we don’t live in that world—we live in one powered by content velocity, screenshot culture, and AI-generated anything.

So when you leave a vacuum? It will be filled.

In the Coldplay Kiss Cam saga, we saw this in real time. The company said nothing. So the internet said everything. It made jokes. Created memes. And then someone posted a fake apology statement that looked exactly like the real thing.

It had all the right ingredients: brand logo, legal-sounding language, plausible timing, exactly the tone people expected—and it was shared widely with zero verification. And remember—viral doesn’t respect borders. The Kiss Cam moment went global within hours, crossing time zones and cultural contexts. If you have international stakeholders, your response timing and cultural sensitivity must account for Sydney waking up while New York sleeps.

If your audience has already written your apology for you, you’ve waited too long.

Even after the company clarified that the apology was fake, the correction barely rippled. By then, the narrative had already hardened, and truth rarely outruns a good meme.

This is the modern cost of silence. It doesn’t just let someone else tell your story—it lets them create it.

To be clear: you don’t need to panic-post or over-explain. But you do need to occupy your own narrative space—early and consistently. Even a single sentence, issued quickly, can slow the spread of fiction long enough for facts to find footing.

Because once the vacuum is full, you’re not fighting for the truth—you’re fighting to be heard at all.

The Clock Is the Content

In crisis communications, you’re not just managing reputational risk. You’re managing time.

Every second you wait? That’s a story someone else gets to write. Every hour you delay? That’s a meme you didn’t get to fact-check. Every day you stay silent? That’s an audience that assumes the worst—and shares it.

The clock isn’t ticking—it’s publishing.

We’re operating in a world where AI can synthesize a plausible-sounding apology faster than your team can get on Zoom. Where TikTokers break news, and screenshots outpace statements. Where “no comment” isn’t interpreted as caution—it’s read as cowardice, cover-up, or complete chaos.

So no, you don’t need all the facts before you speak. But you do need the discipline to show up early, stay human, and be accountable.

Say something. Say it fast. Say it honestly.

I used to say you should be prepared if a crisis hits. But today, it’s not if—it’s when. Be ready. The more prepared you are, the easier it is to get through the news cycle fairly unscathed. And when it’s over? Don’t just move on. Schedule a no-blame debrief within 48 hours. What worked? What didn’t? What almost broke? Update your playbook accordingly. The best crisis communications plan is one that’s been battle-tested—and then made better.

And speaking of unexpected plot twists…

In a move that feels straight out of a Ryan Murphy limited series, Astronomer hired Gwyneth Paltrow—yes, Chris Martin’s ex-wife—as its temporary spokesperson.

Let that sink in: the company at the center of the Coldplay Kiss Cam saga is now represented by the former spouse of the guy who was performing when it all went down.

Whether you think it’s savvy or surreal (I am in the latter camp), one thing’s for sure: they’re not letting the internet write the ending this time.

So here’s your final crisis communications takeaway: if you wait long enough, the story will get stranger. If you move fast enough, the story stays yours.

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