Crisis Communications Agency
Expert Crisis PR Planning & ManagementHigh-pressure situations demand clear, decisive communication. Sapience Communications supports organisations through crisis with practical guidance which protects reputation and business continuity.
Why organisations need to prepare for a crisis event
No organisation plans for a crisis, but most will face one at some point. Whether you are ready to respond or left trying to find your footing will dictate how events unfold.
You may have heard the phrase “by failing to prepare, you prepare to fail” and it applies directly to crisis communications. Before anything goes wrong, you need a clear plan which sets out who needs to be involved and what your key audience expects to hear from you.
Today’s crises unfold in real time, often across multiple channels at once. News breaks on social media, narratives form quickly and rumour and partial information travel faster than the truth. The ability to respond quickly matters, because your brand will be judged on its behaviour and values. Silence creates a vacuum and being unprepared makes that risk even greater.
Sapience is an award-winning crisis management agency with bases in London and Dubai
Our crisis comms services
A crisis communications strategy has to be tailored to every organisation and sector in order to produce results. But what all effective crisis management strategies have at their heart is an understanding of the wider brand, reputation and tone of voice which must be clearly conveyed.
Risk assessment & preparedness
You might expect crises to come out of nowhere but in our experience they rarely arrive without warning. If you look under the hood the signs are usually there, in policies, behaviour or unresolved issues. Our role is to uncover those risks before they materialise and show how they could appear once they become public, so preventative action can be taken before a situation escalates. This includes conducting vulnerability audits, creating crisis management plans and running crisis simulations to test how your organisation would respond in real conditions.
In a crisis, your organisation will be judged on what it stands for, not just what you say. A clear narrative helps ensure responses remain consistent and credible when scrutiny is at its highest.
We help shape those narratives and develop thought leadership which reflects your values and priorities. This creates a stronger foundation for media engagement and stakeholder communications, and helps ensure values are visible in both words and actions over the long term.
Media relations & press office
When issues arise, journalists will look for reliable sources and clear answers. How your organisation shows up in the media shapes public understanding of the situation.
We work as part of your team to handle media enquiries, maintain strong journalist relationships and place considered, positive coverage in the right publications. Alongside this, we provide rapid crisis response and management, ensuring timely and accurate information is shared as events develop.
We work directly with your senior teams through crisis communication training, scenario-based exercises and ongoing senior counsel. This prepares them to speak with confidence and authority in high-stakes situations, ensuring their messages reflect your organisation’s narrative and support a measured, credible response.
A strong response is only as good as the person delivering it.
Your own digital channels, such as your website and social media platforms, are often the first place people look for answers when an issue emerges. What you publish there plays a central role in how your response is seen and shared.
We create content for these channels as part of a wider crisis intervention approach, allowing your organisation to address issues directly, maintain control of messaging and engage audiences without creating additional risk.
Unfortunately, crisis can live on in online coverage – and those search results, headlines and digital coverage can reinforce or prolong negative sentiment.
We use SEO and digital PR to ensure accurate information is visible and to tackle specific instances where issues are appearing. We can help your organisation regain control of its online presence and reduce the long-term impact of negative narratives.
Preparing for a crisis before it happens
Sapience will work with you to establish a permanently on-call team, either by providing additional capacity through our own experts, or training your in-house team to make them better prepared. We will draft all internal and external communications and provide senior counsel as required.
We recognise that an exceptional crisis management service recognises the difference between good strategy and good tactics. We excel in anticipating risks, identifying key stakeholders, and establishing proactive communications.
We have a wealth of experience providing these services across a range of sectors, ranging from healthcare provider Cygnet to financial advisory firm FRP Advisory.
Crisis PR, reputation management and risk mitigation across sectors
Sapience ensures that all of our clients have the guidance to strike the right tone, convey clearly the measures you are taking to address the crisis, keep key audiences updated and demonstrate your own accountability.
A renewable energy provider faces safety concerns after a technical fault forces the shutdown of one of its facilities.
In this scenario, we would start with a vulnerability audit and crisis simulation to understand where risks sit and how decisions would be made. We would create a clear crisis management plan covering regulators, local communities and the media. When the issue becomes public, we would provide rapid crisis response, monitor coverage and support leaders with messaging.
A software provider suffers a major service outage affecting customers across several countries.
Here, our first step would be to prepare senior leaders and technical spokespeople through crisis communication training and put a crisis management plan in place. During the outage, we would coordinate communications across press, website and social channels and track media and online coverage. Digital PR and SEO would be used to ensure accurate information is visible and to address misinformation before it spreads.
A healthcare provider faces criticism following a serious patient safety incident.
In a situation like this, we would devise crisis intervention strategies and run crisis simulations focused on regulatory and public scrutiny. Once the incident becomes public, we would support leaders with rapid crisis response, clear messaging and close monitoring of coverage. We would also use digital and social channels to respond directly to concerns and integrate the response into wider reputation management for the future.
Sapience supports organisations under pressure, whether from a sudden incident, a long-running issue, regulatory action, or growing public criticism. Our team of former journalists, in-house communications leads, and sector specialists is used to incomplete information, legal limits, and intense scrutiny. We help leadership agree the facts, define a clear position, and explain it in plain language to staff, customers, regulators, partners, and the media, while you focus on fixing the underlying problem and protecting long term relationships.
– Richard Morgan Evans, CEO, Sapience Communications
The business impact of poor crisis response
At Sapience, we tailor our approach to suit the specific needs of each client – but, broadly speaking, we seek to elevate the profile of fintech firms among target audiences, establishing their spokespeople as authoritative commentators and thought leaders in their areas of specialism. This involves leveraging our clients for coverage in a variety of online, print and broadcast media.
Without crisis communications in place, organisations risk:
→ Inconsistent or contradictory messaging
→ Loss of trust from customers, employees and partners
→ Increased media and regulatory scrutiny
→ Rumours and misinformation
→ Negative search results and online narratives persisting
→ Poor decisions made under pressure
→ Long-term damage to brand and credibility
Contact us
Our results-driven team has extensive experience across multiple industries and skills. We’d love to hear from you.
Frequently asked questions
Why work with Sapience?
We are crisis intervention specialists, with the experience and expertise of working with clients of all sizes across all sectors, who have the track record to deliver for you.
How is pricing determined?
We sit down with our clients to understand their exact needs and price transparently, based on the amount of time and the number of Sapience team members required to get the job done. Unfortunately there isn’t a standard price to speak of since every situation is unique.
What is the difference between crisis communications and crisis management?
They are interchangeable terms. Both are about controlling as much as possible the way a negative situation is perceived.
What’s the difference between reputation management and crisis management?
These are overlapping disciplines. Whereas crisis management will inevitably concern an often unforeseen, large-scale adverse event affecting an organisation, reputation management often focuses on the longer term building and protection of the perception and brand of an organisation through constant cultivating of a positive image.
How do you prepare for a crisis?
Anticipate, plan and simulate. Sapience can work with you to identify the crises you are likely to face. We then plan the best responses based on the possible scenarios, and can also run simulations of a crisis so that you and your team are as well-prepared as possible.
Can a PR crisis lead to a complete business shutdown?
It can. Not just because of loss of sales or income, but politicians and regulators may decide to intervene if they feel that you are not up to the job of not only putting right what’s gone wrong, but ensuring that it never happens again.
Depending on the sector, things can differ quite a bit in terms of compliance, legislation, public sentiment and other details. B2B sectors are not as sensitive to emotional factors like the consumer sectors when making purchases, but there’s a lot of emphasis on ROI, for example. Similarly, there’s a large subset of technology consumers financially empowered and willing to test emerging solutions, but the same cannot be said about the healthcare industry.
Crises can severely reduce an organisation’s chances to compete and ignored crises can definitely lead to complete shutdown.
What if we need crisis comms for both online and offline?
You absolutely will. The online and offline are inextricably linked. You need access to the PR crisis communications experts who understand this and know how to develop integrated strategies and tactics.
Make an enquiry
If you are looking to enhance your corporate comms and digital marketing efforts with engaging,
relevant content, please get in touch for a free, confidential discussion.
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