How a Company Manages Crisis Communications Can Make or Break
Last week, BrewDog, the Scottish beer brand famous for its eye-catching ads and creative stunts, went into administration and was sold off for a fraction of its value.
It’s set to become one of those textbook examples of what not to do in a PR crisis.
When they first burst on the scene, things were very different for the indie craft brewer. Theirs was one of the big success stories of recent times.
An upstart brand, it grew rapidly and became a billion-pound company, thanks to a series of marketing masterstrokes and a massively loyal customer base. And, crucially, it passed the taste test: their audacious marketing was backed by a great product.
Rock stars of the industry, they made headlines wherever they went. Their daring stunts, which included driving a tank down Camden High Street, a special ‘performance-enhancing’ beer tailor-made for the London Olympics and giving away free beer to encourage people to vote in the 2017 general election, were works of genius.
With their quirky ‘Elvis Juice’ and ‘Punk IPA’ craft beers, their brand was punk, and as disruptors, they were the plucky underdogs taking on the big boys of the brewing industry like the ‘bland’ Heineken and ‘corporate freaks’ at Guinness, as they referred to them.
So, how did it all go wrong?
This is a story about how BrewDog blew it.
Beware of the Dog
Behind the headlines and stunts that made them famous, something darker was brewing.
The company’s often spikey CEO and his team of anti-establishment renegades were long dogged by rumours of a ‘toxic’ and ‘blokeish’ work culture.
The BBC’s Disclosure, which aired in 2022, really put them in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
The programme outlined allegations from former staff detailing instances of bullying, sexual discrimination, misogyny and a pervading ‘culture of fear’ at the company. Unhappy employees sent an open letter with over 100 signatures expressing concerns about the ‘hostile’ work environment.
Their reaction to bad press wasn’t the conventional one. Their full focus should have been on quickly addressing the issues and fixing the failings.
Instead, behind closed doors, it seems like they fell into a state of collective panic and hired private investigators to dig up dirt on the backgrounds of the ex-staffers who had appeared on the programme. Corporate lawyers were also drafted in. This was obviously not a good look for a self-styled ‘punk’ brand, and the public duly took note.
To make matters worse, in 2024, as they battled significant financial challenges, they decided to back out of their much-publicised commitment to becoming a ‘Real’ Living Wage employer. It was obviously a bad decision to make during a cost-of-living crisis. The company had gone big on marketing the pledge a few years earlier and was now quietly removing all its previous blog posts that had trumpeted that commitment.
Ditching such a core company principle obviously landed very badly with workers and punters alike. There was reputational damage to the brand, and it provided a very important lesson in damage limitation: never go back on your brand’s core values.
That wasn’t the only big-ticket pledge they dropped. BrewDog’s bold “Lost Forest” sustainability pledge, launched in 2020, was an ambitious project aimed at making the company “carbon negative”.
It wanted to plant Scotland’s ‘biggest-ever forest,’ but questions soon surfaced about its promotional activity. The company had to later admit their claims linking lager sales to tree-planting in the Lost Forest carried in licensed trade newspapers were “an error in communication”.
They have since sold off the project for a knockdown price and officially stepped away from their carbon-negative claims.
A few months ago, they were back in the doghouse. This time, over a digital billboard campaign which shocked many with its ‘tastes like commercial suicide’ punchline. Suicide charities rightly heavily criticised the PR campaign, forcing the company to quickly axe them.
No Small Beer
But the corporate culture wasn’t the only thing heading south. So too were the company’s finances.
Management wanted the brand to go global and become a unicorn (a billion-pound start-up).
It embarked on a risky strategy of taking on a mountain of high-interest debt to fuel its ambitious drive into new markets.
To fund this massive expansion, it also hyped up its offering to investors. A punk revolution was promised through their crowdfunding campaign ‘Equity for Punks’, which saw over 200,000 small investors sign up.
No small beer for investors, the scheme raised over £75m in funds for the brewer.
However, things didn’t go as planned. Sales stagnated as the economic climate worsened, and because they expanded too quickly, they soon found themselves in financial trouble.
The company’s collapse has sadly left many thousands of small investors who bought BrewDog shares via ‘Equity Punks’ with nothing.
Ultimately, the business ‘punked’ its own investors and the very people who believed in and backed the brand.
And here’s the final nail in the coffin. When they had to make the difficult decision to let many staff go, how did they choose to communicate the bad news? A 15-minute company-wide conference call. Cameras off and no opportunity for questions.
A brand that had once so publicly traded on its anti-establishment public image, at war with fat cats and faceless corporations, loyally on the side of its workers, had done a full 180.
Top 5 Tips for Effective Crisis Management
The company gambled – and lost.
A lesson in many ways on what not to do in a crisis.
Yet this was most probably not a reflection on their PR team. PR pros have a safety-first mindset when it comes to protecting reputation.
It’s seemingly more about the company culture and its leadership. Leaders set the tone, make the decisions and are ultimately responsible for what happens on their watch.
What are the key takeaways from all this?
Here are the top five PR tips for brands in crisis mode:
- Always be authentic and stay true to your brand’s values. Your brand depends on it. People are loyal to brands that they can trust. The best brands have an emotional connection with their audience, so be sure your brand identity isn’t compromised by a sudden change in messaging that betrays your principles.
- Leadership counts: the way your organisation initially responds to a crisis is key. Address the situation. Be open and transparent, accept full responsibility and take immediate steps to fix your company culture if it’s broken.
- Never oversell yourself. It’s important for the future of your company that you don’t overstate. Too much hype can be your enemy.
- Don’t take risks with your brand’s reputation. Have a clear, comprehensive, and effective crisis communication plan that you stick to.
- And whatever you do, and this is probably one of the biggest don’ts of all time in whatever field you’re in, never orchestrate a secret ‘smear campaign’ to discredit former staff who air their grievances in public!
Get a Crisis Communication Plan, Pronto!
Are things looking dicey? A full-blown crisis can happen in the blink of an eye and take many forms. A cyber incident. A social media post backfires. A data breach. An executive behaving badly. A flurry of negative media headlines.
In the age of social media, a story can go viral in seconds, and a hard-earned reputation can be lost in minutes.
No matter what type of crisis you’re facing, the core goal is to protect your brand’s reputation while maintaining trust with stakeholders and the public. Your crisis response must be factual, timely and clear.
Every business, big or small, should have a crisis comms plan. Preparing for the worst and devising a plan are critical to surviving one.
Effective crisis communication starts well before the crisis hits. Having a clear plan and mechanisms in place will help you navigate a crisis when you’re in the eye of the storm.
The stakes are high and the pressure intense under the media glare. Believe me, your PR team will be thankful for having well-drilled plans. The more prepared you are, the better the chances that your brand will avoid long-term reputational harm.
BrewDog might have fared better if it had maintained transparency, message discipline and had a clear crisis communications plan. All too often, its communications strategy was seemingly made on the hoof.
Best practice would have been to get its house in order quickly, take robust lines, stick to core values, and show fiscal restraint.
Hopefully, the new owners will see the company return to its former glories and once again become the challenger brand that rules the craft beer market.
Mastering Crisis
Are you a business leader dealing with a crisis communications situation? Or worried that your brand doesn’t have a crisis comms plan?
Don’t take risks and leave it to chance. Get a crisis plan.
Our team of PR experts has extensive experience in managing high-profile crises and can help you weather the media storm. You’ll be in safe hands.
Future-proof your business.
Contact us today for specialist crisis PR advice.
Check out our previous post on how to make your business crisis-ready here.
For another example of a crisis badly managed, read our previous blog about US retail giant Target, which paid a heavy price for turning its back on its brand values.
