Crisis Communications and Crisis Management
Respond fast and effectively when the stakes are high. We help you plan for crises and manage the most difficult moments.
Fitler Square Strategies is a Philadelphia-based crisis communications firm with 20+ years of experience helping businesses, nonprofits, government agencies, and executives navigate high-stakes crises. We provide end-to-end crisis communications services from planning and training to 24/7 emergency response and AI visibility monitoring. Our team has managed crises for elected leaders, CEOs, academic institutions, and organizations across healthcare, hospitality, education, and energy.
Crisis Communications Plans
We work with clients to determine the types of crisis that your organization might face such as natural disasters, data breach, product recall, employee misconduct, or any other disruptive events. Based on these conversations we identify the members of a crisis communications team, which may include senior executives, legal, human resources, public relations, and IT staff.
Our team develops a plan that includes goals, tactics, crisis teams, holding statements and content, approval processes, and internal and external notification strategies that will ensure that your team is prepared for a crisis. We help develop a protocol for determining who will be responsible for communicating during a crisis, what communication channels will be used, and how often the updates will be provided.
Table Top Exercises and Crisis Training
We work with clients to help organizations prepare by scheduling and running table top exercises and crisis trainings focused on public relations. We run scenarios of potential crises for your team to enhance preparedness and measure how well the crisis communication strategy is working. Table top trainings simulate an emergency or crisis situations in a controlled environment. In this exercise, participants are taken through a hypothetical scenario and are asked to react and take action accordingly. When we develop and run table top exercises we test the participants' knowledge, skills, and decision-making abilities based on the crisis communications plan.
On Call and Emergency Crisis Communications Services
In addition to planning and training, we provide on call and emergency crisis communications services. We help our clients provide real-time communication channels for critical information to be shared with stakeholders and the public at large. We work with clients to manage their response to a crisis by offering quick and effective communication channels to manage urgent situations and minimize the impact of a crisis.
Crisis Media Monitoring
Misinformation and reputation harming content travels fast, and we help clients monitor their reputations so they are aware of public narratives and potential problems as soon as they arise. Public awareness of a problem or crisis often occurs before a company is aware and misinformation or disinformation can travel fast before an organization can respond. Before you know it the court of public opinion could have already sided against you, and organizations and individuals might be attacking you. By monitoring your organization's reputation, we can help get ahead of problems before they become full blown crises.
Executive Counsel for Crisis Situations
We have worked with high-profile executives, government leaders, and elected officials to provide strategic communications counsel during crises. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we advised a governor on statewide crisis communications, managing media relations, stakeholder communications, and public messaging during one of the most challenging public health crises in modern history. We understand the unique pressures facing senior leaders including media scrutiny, legal considerations, board accountability, and the need for rapid, accurate decision-making under pressure. We provide discreet, senior-level counsel to help leaders guide their organizations through the most difficult moments.
Rapid Response
We can help your organization establish a rapid response protocol and command center operations and procedures. We can identify the key stakeholders and personnel who will be involved in the rapid response and command center including representatives from different departments such as operations, communications, logistics, and legal. We can help share and operationalize your crisis communications plan to guide your rapid response. We have worked with emergency management organizations and high-profile political campaigns to provide rapid response.
Crisis PR and Ongoing PR
We are a public relations agency that specializes in crisis management. We can lead your public relations response to a crisis including media relations and outreach, paid media, and social media to respond to and resolve crises.
In addition to our crisis work, we can help your organization develop a track of proactive communications efforts that build your reputation so you have goodwill and capital when you are faced with a difficult situation. A PR agency should always work to promote and protect your organization, meaning that your goals and tactics should help to mitigate vulnerabilities and build credibility that can survive a crisis. While we are a crisis PR agency, we understand the importance of brand and reputation building on blue sky days.
AI Visibility
When a crisis strikes, AI search tools can be as damaging as traditional media, and they move faster. Platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews shape public perception by surfacing content about your organization, often before you are aware a narrative is forming. We audit what AI tools are saying about your organization, identify harmful or inaccurate content, and develop a strategy to correct the record and improve your AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) profiles.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is crisis communications?
Crisis communications is a strategic communications or public relations practice that helps organizations prepare for, respond to, and recover from events that threaten their reputation, operations, or public trust. Firms like Fitler Square Strategies can help organizations prepare for crises through planning and training. We develop crisis communications plans, prepare collateral including holding statements and social media posts, assist organizations with training, and work with them to minimize damage and protect an organization's reputation.
What types of crises do you handle?
Fitler Square Strategies helps organizations of all sizes with crises, including data breaches, regulatory investigations, and reputational attacks, as well as employee misconduct, product recalls, natural disasters, personnel issues, and social media controversies. We have deep political and policy experience and can provide expert support for organizations facing political or policy-driven crises, including legislative and government investigations.
How quickly can you respond to a crisis?
We are available 24/7 and can be engaged immediately. Our team can provide rapid response, deploy holding statements, create social media collateral, and develop stakeholder communications within hours of being retained. We have media, social media, and AI visibility-monitoring capabilities so your organization can understand the impact and reactions to the crisis.
Do you provide crisis communications plans?
Yes. We write comprehensive crisis communications plans for organizations. We base our plans on research into the organization, the environment it operates in, and potential vulnerablities. Our plans focus on team structure, approvals, notifications, and other processes that help organizations respond appropriately during a crisis. We develop collateral including holding statements and social media content.
What is a tabletop exercise?
A tabletop exercise is a simulated crisis scenario that tests an organization's crisis communications plan and the team’s ability to respond. Participants are walked through a realistic hypothetical crisis and asked to respond in real time. Fitler Square Strategies designs and facilitates tabletop exercises to assess preparedness, identify gaps in the crisis plan, and build skills that strengthen the crisis team. We also use proprietary software, Siege, to help organizations train for social media crises.
What industries do you serve?
We have experience managing crises in most industries, including healthcare, education, hospitality, energy, nonprofits, and consumer products. We have provided crisis communications counsel to governors, CEOs, academic institutions, small businesses, and large corporations at the local, state, and national levels.
Contact
Fitler Square Strategies
Phone
(215) 326-9105
Email
mark@fitlerstrategies.com
Philadelphia Address
2401 Walnut Street,
Suite 800,
Philadelphia, PA 19103
