What is Considered Crisis PR experience?

Anyone can call themselves a PR expert. The title costs nothing.

PR experience is judgement that has already been tested in public, by a regulator, angry customers, investors or a newsroom. The simplest way to evaluate an Australian PR agency is to ask for specifics: which crisis, what outcome.

Fifteen questions worth asking are listed at the end of this article. A track record survives the questions.

Crisis work is a separate discipline

Almost every agency lists crisis among its services. But the skills are specific. While a product launch tests creativity, a crisis tests whether an adviser can hold one line while lawyers and the board push different agendas.

KPMG is a 2026 example.

A whistleblower, in 2024, alleged confidential client documents were being shared inappropriately inside the firm. In 2026, KPMG’s CEO admitted, in a televised parliamentary committee, that its handling of the whistleblower had fallen short, but said an external legal review had supported its internal investigation. That’s the first crisis.

Then, KPMG withheld the reports in a situation requiring transparency, claiming legal professional privilege. The second crisis. The cover-up was a reputation disaster. Eventually, under pressure and on camera, the chair caved and reversed it [2].

Neither he nor the chief executive survived the concealment. [1]. [3],

Lawyers see privilege as caution. An experienced PR adviser sees a cover-up, and what’s coming. That type of conflict can arise in any crisis.

Genuine crisis communications experience means knowing how a statement will be tested before it’s issued.

Ask the agency which crisis it has advised through, from the first call to the last hearing. Ask when it told a client what the client didn’t want to hear, and what happened next.

Then ask if its advice to you were read aloud at a parliamentary inquiry, would it be comfortable with every word? If it hesitates, so should you.

Peter Wilkinson, Managing Director of Wilkinson Group

The Author – Peter Wilkinson

Aligned ethics come before the crisis, not during it

An adviser’s reputation travels with its client’s.

Ask for its Code of Conduct, and which clients it won’t work with. An agency with no answer to the second question doesn’t really have the first.

An agency that will work for anyone will tell anyone what they want to hear. That includes you.

Social media is judgement, not a posting schedule

In 2025, social media overtook news websites as Australians’ main source of news for the first time, 26 per cent to 23 per cent [4]. A crisis can now reach a platform before it reaches a newsroom.

Here, a cheerful post published on schedule in the middle of a crisis becomes a second story. Ask who monitors your channels at 7 am, and who can pause scheduled content without waiting for sign-offs.

Reputation is measured after the headlines stop

Reputation management expertise shows up in the years after an event, not the week of it.

On 4 June 2018, Commonwealth Bank agreed to pay a $700 million penalty to AUSTRAC, the financial intelligence agency, for breaching anti-money laundering law. Its new chief executive, Matt Comyn, apologised to the community the same day [5], [6]. It didn’t end CBA’s trouble, but it gave the bank a position it could be held to.

In January 2019, Roy Morgan found CBA had the lowest trust and highest distrust of any Australian bank [7]. In 2025 it was named Australia’s most trusted bank [8], and ranked a record fourth among all Australian brands [9].

The recovery took seven years.

Ask for case studies relevant to your issue, then for one that didn’t work and what the agency would do differently. Everyone has one. Advisers who can’t name theirs haven’t learned from it.

Plenty of crisis work is confidential. A seasoned adviser can still describe the incident, the timeline and the calls they made without naming the client.

Fifteen questions to ask before you sign

Which crisis have you advised through, from the first call to the last hearing?
What did you tell a client they didn’t want to hear, and what happened next?
Who will actually do the work, and will I meet them before I sign?
Who, by name, would take my call at 3 am on a Sunday?
When did you last advise a client to say nothing?
How do you work with our general counsel when legal and reputational advice conflict?
What is your Code of Conduct, and what clients won’t you work with?
What would you stop us doing tomorrow?
What would you want to know about us in the first week, before anything goes wrong?
Tell me about a crisis response that didn’t work, and what you’d change.
Which of our competitors do you act for, and what happens if a crisis involves both of us?
When did you last deal with a regulator, not just a journalist?
How will we know your advice worked?
When did you last run a crisis simulation, and what did it expose?
Who monitors our social channels at 7 am, and who can pause scheduled content?