Crisis Playbook
Your guide to building resilient brands under pressure
Every brand faces pressure—but not all pressure looks the same. The Crisis Playbook Series is a modular toolkit designed to help organizations navigate four distinct types of reputational risk: Operational Disruption, Economic Pressure, Cultural Scrutiny, and Tech/Ethical Risk. Each playbook equips leaders with diagnostic tools, case snapshots, and actionable strategies to assess how well their brand’s identity, messaging, and behaviour hold up under stress.
Whether you're managing a system failure, responding to pricing backlash, addressing social controversy, or confronting ethical concerns around AI and data, these playbooks offer a clear path forward. Grounded in behavioural insight and built for real-world use, the series helps teams move from reactive damage control to proactive trust-building—turning moments of crisis into opportunities for credibility and leadership.
Brand Dummy offers four free playbooks to help marketers tackle common brand risks with practical tools and insights. For deeper challenges like AI backlash and Gen Z scrutiny, premium playbooks are available at cost—each packed with behavioural diagnostics, case studies, and response frameworks.
Free playbooks
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Economic Pressure
Economic Pressure arises when pricing decisions, layoffs, or profit-driven moves trigger public backlash. The playbook guides teams in balancing financial necessity with empathy, using transparent messaging and values-driven framing to maintain trust during tough trade-offs.
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Cultural Scrutiny
Cultural Scrutiny surfaces when a brand’s actions clash with social values, norms, or public sentiment—often around inclusion, representation, or political alignment. This playbook equips leaders to clarify intent, engage critics constructively, and rebuild credibility through authentic behaviour.
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Operational Disruption
Operational Disruption occurs when systems, services, or logistics break down—whether due to outages, delays, or internal failures. This playbook helps brands respond swiftly, communicate clearly, and restore reliability while reinforcing their identity as dependable and accountable.
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Tech/Ethical Risk
Tech/Ethical Risk emerges when AI, data, or digital systems raise concerns about fairness, privacy, or accountability. The playbook offers tools to assess ethical alignment across identity, messaging, and behaviour—helping brands respond with integrity and lead with values.
Premium playbooks
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AI Risk
CA$79
Safeguard consumer trust by diagnosing how AI missteps—such as bias, opacity, privacy breaches, or unsafe outputs—can erode perceptions of fairness, transparency, and accountability. This playbook offers behavioural insights, scenario-based response strategies, and practical tools to anticipate risks, communicate with empathy, and reinforce credibility through visible safeguards and trust-centred design.
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Gen Z Scrutiny
CA$49
Navigate the fast-changing expectations of Gen Z—a generation defined by its cultural influence, digital fluency, and strong values around sustainability, inclusivity, and social impact. This playbook offers behavioural diagnostics, response strategies, and real-world scenarios to manage backlash, trend fatigue, and performative activism, turning generational volatility into a trust-building advantage.
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Greenwashing
CA$64
Prevent and respond to sustainability claims that outpace reality. This playbook offers behavioural diagnostics, early warning signals, and trust repair strategies to align messaging with operations, avoid performative pitfalls, and build credibility through transparency and accountability.
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Executive Misconduct
CA$79
Navigate leadership scandals and ethical breaches. Reframe misconduct as a systemic trust risk—not just a reputational flare-up—and equips teams to respond with transparency, empathy, and structural reform. Through behavioural diagnostics, scenario planning, and trust repair frameworks, the playbook helps organizations protect credibility, rebuild stakeholder confidence, and embed accountability into leadership systems.
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Product Recall & Safety
CA$64
Equip your organization to manage recalls with speed, empathy, and transparency. The playbook provides actionable frameworks, scenario grids, and trust‑repair strategies that help brands anticipate stakeholder scrutiny, communicate authentically, and prove accountability. By aligning identity, messaging, and behaviour, the playbook transforms recalls from reputational threats into opportunities to reinforce credibility and resilience.
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ESG Claims & Accountability
CA$79
Manage the rising trust risks tied to Environmental, Social, and Governance commitments. The playbook reframes ESG not as a marketing narrative but as a structural credibility test, offering diagnostic tools, disclosure frameworks, and response strategies to anticipate scrutiny from consumers, investors, regulators, and activists. By aligning identity, messaging, and behaviour with verifiable proof, the playbook helps brands transform ESG promises into enduring trust assets.
Testimonials
“This playbook didn’t just help us respond—it helped us rethink our entire messaging system. The Pressure Test Grid revealed blind spots we hadn’t considered, and our recovery narrative landed with real credibility.”
VP of Brand Strategy
“We used the Gen Z Scrutiny Playbook to audit our influencer partnerships before launch. It saved us from a potential backlash and gave our team a shared language for trust-building.”
Director of Customer Loyalty