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“I presume you will be writing about P&O Ferries in your crisis communication training blog.” This was just one of the messages we received as anger grew at the firm’s brutal staff cull.

There’s nothing more meaningless than an insincere apology. And we have seen plenty of them already this year.

Household brands, universities, healthcare providers, charities, football clubs and government departments were just some of the organisations that found their social media posts taken to task as a perceived PR opportunity turned into a nightmare.

Does your crisis communication plan include how to respond to the death of Queen Elizabeth? That morbid and unsettling question was probably not what you expected to read about in our blog.

Imagine the scene. You’re watching the news coverage of the terrible scenes in Ukraine. Suddenly the news channel cuts to an advert break and, while the invasion footage continues to be shown on the bottom of the screen, viewers see a light-hearted and jarring commercial from your brand.

The bean counters have certainly been busy lately. Amid the coverage of the storms that have battered Britain for the past few days, several brands have been announcing price hikes.

Social media can be a tricky place for corporate accounts to navigate. How do you stand out in such as crowded arena? The answer for some, such as Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream and Nike, is to try and raise awareness of social issues.

The NHS, United Airlines, Carhartt, Next, Ocado, Morrisons – these are just some of the big-name brands that have found themselves walking a reputational tightrope as companies are increasingly drawn into making decisions about the health and safety of their workforce.

Many brands are grappling with sustainability and purpose. They are topics that regularly come up in conversation with our clients who are increasingly wanting help telling sustainability stories.

Apologies. We’ve all seen plenty of them lately. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said sorry for attending a party during lockdown. Novak Djokovic, the world’s number one tennis player, apologised for a mistake on his Australian immigration paperwork and for breaking isolation for a photoshoot when he had covid.

Energy prices are soaring, and many face a cost-of-living crisis. So, advice on staying warm without cranking the heating up could have been useful. The advice issued by OVO Energy to its SSE customers, however, was neither helpful nor meaningful.

It has been another challenging year, hasn’t it? And while it has felt closer to normal than the previous 12 months, covid has never strayed far from the centre of attention.

Let’s say your business was closing some of its offices or shops, shutting down a service or discontinuing a product? How would you communicate the bad news?

All organisations are vulnerable to crises and rarely a day passes without a brand making headlines for the wrong reasons or finding itself at the centre of a storm. But some are much more memorable than others.

Covid placed internal comms teams in the spotlight like never before. As the working world changed dramatically almost overnight, internal comms professionals had an integral role in communicating new ways of working and ensuring employees felt safe and supported.

If you are one of the many people who has turned to online supermarket shopping, you may have endured a frustrating weekend. The Tesco website and app went down on Saturday (23/10), leaving shoppers unable to buy groceries online at the country’s biggest supermarket.

Another day and another crisis to add to the queue of issues facing the government. Having already been hit by collapsing energy companies and concern about food supplies, the country has now been struck by another outbreak of panic buying, this time draining petrol pumps.

Trade publications may not have the glamour of mainstream newspapers or appearing on TV or radio. In fact, some publications like Potato Storage International, Drain Trader and Poultry World have been the subject of jokes on Have I Got News For You.

This is a question that is increasingly coming up when we speak to clients about presentation skills, hosting webinars and creating videos for both internal and external audiences.

It’s your worst nightmare at work: taking that phone call that says there’s been a fatality. No matter how long you’ve been with the comms team or how tough a PRO you are, nothing can really prepare you. There is that overwhelming feeling of shock followed by a hundred questions in your head which you don’t know the answer to. Then you have to put your own emotions aside as you know the media will soon be hammering on your door expecting/demanding answers.

We are often asked during our crisis communication training courses whether organisations should try to put an incident into context.

This time of year used to be known as silly season. A six-week period when news would take a well-earned holiday and be replaced by obscure stories unlikely to be covered at any other time.

On our crisis communication courses, we often spend time looking at the potential causes of a crisis.

Imagine being a new start-up and almost immediately finding yourself trending on social media. Not only that, but you generate coverage in the Financial Times and Daily Mail. Sounds great, right?

Apologies are tricky. Regular readers of our crisis communication and social media training blogs will know there have been plenty of recent examples of apologies that have fallen short of the mark.

Companies are built on their reputations. But those reputations are fragile. A single incident can cause severe damage. In some cases, reputations are destroyed.

There can be many causes of a crisis media management incident. When we ask delegates on our crisis communication training courses to suggest what might cause a reputational crisis for their organisation, they typically suggest things like incidents resulting in loss of life, significant injury or environmental harm.

When we talk about crisis communication, we typically think of incidents that are over relatively quickly. Yes, the overall aim of managing a crisis is to protect the long-term reputation of your organisation and its bottom line, but crisis incidents typically last a few weeks or maybe a month.

Just when you wondered if our divided nation could ever be united again, football found a way of bringing everyone together.

When your organisation is facing a crisis, good communication is crucial. Do it well and it can reduce fear and uncertainty and gain some control of the story. But how do you ensure your customers, stakeholders and the media see and hear what you have to say?