The Pressure Test Grid (PTG) is a behavioural diagnostic tool developed by Brand Dummy designed to help brands assess how well their identity, messaging, and behaviour hold up under stress. Whether you're facing AI backlash, cultural scrutiny, operational disruption, or economic pressure, this grid helps you anticipate how consumers will interpret your actions—not just what you say, but how it feels. It reframes reputational risk through the lens of fairness, transparency, and emotional resonance, giving teams a structured way to evaluate credibility before a crisis unfolds.

Each quadrant of the grid corresponds to a different type of reputational stressor, allowing you to map your brand’s strengths and vulnerabilities across scenarios. It’s especially useful for cross-functional teams—marketing, PR, legal, and product—who need a shared language to diagnose risk and align on response strategies. By identifying weak signals early, the grid helps you shift from reactive damage control to proactive trust-building.

The Pressure Test Grid is designed to be simple, visual, and actionable. Its format is a 3x3 matrix that allows leaders to quickly map how their brand performs across dimensions and stressors. Each cell represents a diagnostic checkpoint, where resilience can be marked as Resilient (✅), Vulnerable (⚠️), or Exposed (❌). This visual format makes it easy to see patterns: strengths that hold across scenarios, vulnerabilities that cluster in certain areas, and exposures that demand immediate attention.

The grid is not meant to be static. It should be revisited regularly—before major launches, after crises, or during annual brand reviews. By filling in the matrix, teams create a snapshot of resilience that can be tracked over time, turning the grid into both a diagnostic and a monitoring tool.

After completing the Pressure Test Grid, a brand receives a behavioural snapshot of how its identity, messaging, and actions hold up under different types of reputational stress—AI risk, cultural scrutiny, operational disruption, and economic pressure. The scoring highlights areas of strength (e.g., clear accountability, inclusive tone, visible safeguards) and flags vulnerabilities where trust may erode under scrutiny. This diagnostic doesn’t produce a single numeric score, but rather a strategic map showing which stressors expose credibility gaps and where proactive adjustments can build resilience before a crisis hits.

The Pressure Test Grid designed by Brand Dummy is your starting point for building brand resilience. It pairs perfectly with the full Crisis Playbook Series, giving you a preview of the strategic depth and practical tools available in each playbook. Download it, pressure-test your brand, and start turning scrutiny into strength.

The Green Messaging Audit (GMA) is a diagnostic framework designed to evaluate the strength and authenticity of a brand’s sustainability and ESG communications. In an era where vague claims are quickly reframed as greenwashing, the audit provides a structured way to test whether messaging is clear, credible, consistent, and resilient under scrutiny.

Unlike compliance checklists, the audit simulates real‑world stressors—regulatory challenges, activist critiques, consumer skepticism, and investor inquiries. Each claim is mapped across these scenarios to reveal whether it is resilient, vulnerable, or exposed. This approach transforms abstract reputational risk into tangible checkpoints that leaders can act on.

The audit uses a simple visual matrix with three symbols: ✅ a green arrow box for resilient claims, ⚠️ a yellow triangle for vulnerable claims, and ❌ a red X for exposed claims. By scoring each dimension, organizations create a snapshot of credibility that can be tracked over time. This makes the audit both a diagnostic tool and a monitoring system, helping teams identify patterns and prioritize fixes.

Ultimately, the Green Messaging Audit is about building trust. It ensures that sustainability messaging is not only ambitious but also transparent, verifiable, and aligned with authentic behaviour. By embedding the audit into campaign planning, ESG reporting, and board assurance, brands move from reactive crisis management to proactive credibility design—turning sustainability commitments into durable assets rather than liabilities.

The Sustainability Storytelling Framework (SSF) is a practitioner‑ready methodology designed to help organizations communicate their ESG commitments with credibility, emotional resonance, and resilience. Built on five pillars—Sincerity, Transparency, Ownership, Relevance, and Yield—the framework ensures that sustainability narratives balance ambition with authenticity. It moves beyond compliance reporting by guiding brands to craft stories that are both verifiable and inspiring, transforming sustainability messaging from a liability risk into a durable trust asset.

At its core, SSF functions as both a diagnostic and design tool. The diagnostic matrix maps each pillar against key stakeholder groups—consumers, investors, regulators, and activists—allowing teams to identify gaps where credibility or resonance may be weak. The design template then provides a structured approach for reframing commitments into narratives that disclose progress honestly, acknowledge limitations, assign clear accountability, connect outcomes to stakeholder identity, and highlight tangible impact. This dual format makes SSF adaptable across campaigns, ESG reports, and board‑level reviews.

The framework is also built for continuous improvement. By applying a 1–5 scoring rubric to each pillar, organizations can track storytelling credibility over time, creating a longitudinal record of progress. This scoring process not only highlights areas of vulnerability but also provides boards and executives with assurance that communication practices are evolving in step with rising stakeholder expectations. Sharing scores internally or externally further signals transparency and reinforces trust.

Ultimately, SSF equips organizations to move beyond ad‑hoc sustainability messaging and embed storytelling as a disciplined practice. It helps brands avoid common behavioural triggers such as vague language, overclaiming, or selective disclosure, while fostering narratives that inspire confidence and withstand scrutiny. In a marketplace where reputational risk can shift overnight, SSF positions sustainability storytelling as a strategic asset—one that strengthens credibility, builds emotional equity, and ensures long‑term brand resilience.