Start the morning off with a bang as we go straight into a practical scenario session where you can work through a crisis and determine how best to deal with it.

Chair's opening remarks

• How to shift crisis communications from firefighting toward protecting long-term reputation and managing the aftermath.
• Why internal behaviour, leadership visibility and organisational values are scrutinised instantly.
• How boards and comms teams work together to set tone, model accountability and communicate clearly during and after crises.

• Why crises organisations face - war, climate, inequality, Brexit, Trump - are increasingly political, even when brands want to avoid politics.

• The challenge of communicating risk when politics is contentious and organisations are cautious about engaging publicly.

• What crisis comms looks like when every crisis is political but organisations still want to stay out of political controversy

• Most crises start inside systems — stakeholder expectations, regulatory relationships and operational dependencies — long before headlines appear.
• How organisations operating in near‑obscurity become front-page news instantly when something goes wrong.
• Why traditional crisis playbooks must adapt when reputation is defined by regulatory confidence and licence to operate, not consumer sentiment.

• Why the harder AI crisis problem is not deepfakes or fake videos, but internal decisions about AI use and stakeholder reactions. 

• Risks created by staff using unapproved tools, customers rejecting synthetic content, regulators questioning accountability and communities objecting to data centres.

• Why comms should convene cross-functional conversations, drawing on Stephen’s work on AI for Public Relations.

• Insight and practical guidance from seasoned communication leads on their immediate response to crisis — from defining a crisis to establishing first actions.
• How to manage scrutiny coming from all angles in the earliest moments.
• Early decision-making approaches that shape the trajectory of the response.

Every table will be assigned a set of  real-world crisis communications challenges, tackling complex problems such as culture, cyber, geopolitics and AI.

With an expert moderator guiding the discussion, you’ll talk through reporting roadblocks, stress-test different response scenarios, and work toward practical solutions you can take straight back to your boardroom. 

The goal is simple: leave with robust frameworks and actionable strategies to immediately improve your crisis communication strategies.

• How prolonged media campaigns left members feeling attacked and looking to their professional body for defence.

• How members pressured the College to take a public stand on a sensitive geopolitical issue outside its remit.

• Balancing public messaging with intense internal expectations while protecting member trust and organisational credibility.

• Preparing leaders to show humanity, clarity and accountability even when visibility feels uncomfortable.

• How culture shapes crisis behaviour and how internal trust is rebuilt after leadership failures.

• Why comms, HR, legal and cyber teams must work together to support leaders in high-stakes moments.