| name | 66-crisis-playbook-global |
| description | Use when a brand faces a communications CRISIS or a campaign is failing in public — L1 to L5 severity classification, a first-four-hours process, response templates by type, an escalation matrix, a do-not-do list, holding statements, and a post-mortem. Trigger on 'PR crisis', 'crisis playbook', 'a complaint is going viral', 'bad reviews are spreading', 'our content caused backlash', 'we are getting attacked online'. Also use when the user forwards an angry thread and asks what to do right now. Not for — monitoring before anything blows up, see `15-social-listening-global`; diagnosing weak performance numbers, see `03-performance-eval-global`; the routine post-campaign review, see `63-campaign-retrospective-global`. |
| metadata | {"version":"1.0.1","category":"operations"} |
| license | MIT |
| triggers | ["crisis","crisis playbook","PR crisis","campaign is failing","content caused backlash","bad reviews spreading","complaint going viral","brand under attack online"] |
| output | File .md — crisis classification, hour-by-hour response plan, who does what, what to say and not say, escalation matrix, post-mortem |
| related | ["15-social-listening-global","03-performance-eval-global","63-campaign-retrospective-global","07-marketing-report-global","62-marketing-review-global"] |
Crisis Playbook (Global)
A crisis arrives without warning, so the playbook must exist before it is needed. Three ground rules: (1) do not react before you have facts — most crises look worse than they are in the first 30 minutes; (2) do not stay silent past 4 hours on a spreading crisis, because silence reads as admission; (3) handled well, a crisis builds trust; handled badly, it destroys it permanently.
Information gathering
Read the 15-social-listening-global report if available (early detection). Before doing anything, answer 4 questions:
- What type of crisis is this? Match it against the L1-L5 table below.
- How fast is it spreading? Ten people or ten thousand? One channel, or has it jumped channels?
- Where did it start? An unhappy customer, a creator or influencer, a competitor, a regulator, or the press?
- What is actually true? Which fact is disputed, do you have evidence, and do you have enough to respond at all?
If you do not have enough information: publish one short line confirming you are investigating and commit to a specific update time. Do not go silent, and do not respond to unverified claims.
Principles
- Assess first, react second. Thirty to sixty minutes of investigation beats a wrong answer in five minutes.
- Never silent past 4 hours on a spreading crisis.
- Do not delete legitimate negative comments (clear spam and hate speech excepted) — deleting escalates.
- Do not argue in public. Move the complainant to a private channel.
- Do not respond while emotional. Draft it, wait 30 minutes, reread, then send.
- Do not promise what you cannot deliver, and do not minimize the facts.
- L3 and above must go to the leader. Never self-handled.
- Regulated categories escalate straight to legal. In health, finance, insurance, credit, and crypto, any challenge to a claim goes directly to legal review — do not draft a public response first.
Crisis classification
| Level | Type | Example | Priority | Response window |
|---|
| L1 | Operational — campaign or system failure, severe KPI miss | Ads not delivering, landing page down, tracking broken | High |
