How Brands Should Respond to A Crisis, According to Consumers

Amid an unpredictable regulatory environment and the massive visibility that comes with algorithm-informed social feeds (among many other things), brands are perhaps more susceptible to crises today than ever before. With one post, a disgruntled customer — who in a different era could have been dealt with privately — can now turn a company into public fodder for days, weeks or even months on end, which can result in everything from a small (but often recoverable) dent in reputation to a sustained decline in sales. 

New Morning Consult data offers insight into how consumers expect companies to respond when scandal strikes, offering a reliable playbook for any brand that finds itself in a crisis situation.

Bad experiences stand out 

Of seven tested unfavorable situations, U.S. adults identified bad product or service experiences (39%), unprofessional hiring or firing practices (38%), and insensitive or distasteful advertising campaigns (36%) as the three “worst” that a brand could encounter.

Similar shares said the same about poor behavior from employees (34%) and CEOs (32%). However, stealing from small artists or creators was viewed as a major issue by a much smaller portion of adults (21%).

Given that consumers rely on companies to provide useful and safe goods and services to go about their everyday lives, it makes sense that they perceive bad experiences with these things with such negative intensity. That said, they’re almost entirely unavoidable — products are bound to underperform now and then, as are people.

In general, consumers understand this and are willing to give grace accordingly; it’s consistently bad experiences that are most detrimental to brand reputation. 

Take Boeing for example. Before a series of crashes and dangerous malfunctions involving its 737 MAX aircraft that began in 2018, the manufacturer’s net favorability (the share of those with a positive opinion of Boeing minus the share of those with a negative opinion) hovered around 40. Issues with the 737 MAX have occurred almost annually since then, and sentiment toward the company has never fully recovered. As of March 2025, Boeing’s net favorability was just 13. Other metrics, including trust, saw similarly dramatic declines over the same period. 

Fortunately, repeat offenses are much more avoidable — especially if brands follow the advice of consumers. 

Apologize, apologize, apologize 

No matter the negative situation, U.S. adults are clear on how they expect companies to respond: with an “apology and an admission of wrongdoing,” as well as an “updating of operating procedures to account for the particular issue.” When prompted with a list of potential ways a brand could respond to each tested crisis, there was a notable gap between the share who selected these two actions and all others.

Responses like offering free product, donating to charity, doing nothing or firing workers, meanwhile, are decidedly less popular. (However, consumers see the latter as more appropriate when crises revolve around a single employee, like a CEO, or a group of employees.)

We also asked respondents whether brands should act “quickly” or “thoughtfully” when in a moment of crisis, and a plurality (35%) said that both approaches were “equally important.” Gen Zers, however, displayed a more clear preference: Nearly 2 in 5 (39%) members of the young cohort said a thoughtful crisis response is best, double-digits higher those who said the same of speed (23%), or both (25%). And with Gen Zers already well-known for calling brands out on disingenuous behavior, it’s likely this position will only deepen over time as they mature.

Still, it’s undoubtedly a challenge to craft a crisis response that is both rapid and reflective — but companies do manage to do it from time to time, and one recent example is Bumble. The dating app came under fire in early 2024 for a brand refresh campaign referencing celibacy, which many women found offensive. Within a week, Bumble had taken down all of the assets tied to the campaign (both in real life and online) and posted a message to its Instagram account taking accountability for missing the advertising mark, made donations to women’s organizations and offered the remaining time on its billboard reservations to these groups. 

From an immediate apology to meaningful (and mullti-layered) corrective action, the brand hit everything on consumers’ preferred crisis response checklist. Plus, they also met delivery method expectations by sharing it all openly online. 

Take it to social  

Social media is U.S. adults’ preferred channel for hearing from brands by a wide margin, during a crisis or otherwise. For each of the below scenarios, social media beat out every other tested channel (excluding TV interviews) by double digits, further reinforcing that it has fully replaced traditional media atop Americans’ news diet.

As such, if and when crisis strikes, corporate communications teams should ensure that most of their attention — and available budget — are funneled into social-optimized formats.

While it’s never ideal for a brand to be at the center of a scandal, there is some potential upside to these situations that marketers should feel motivated by — or at least keep in mind. 

Approximately half (51%) of Gen Z adults said they have checked out a company after hearing about it for the first time in a negative context, and roughly one-third (32%) said they have actually purchased from a company that they were first introduced to in a negative manner. The shares of all U.S. adults who said the same were also not negligible: 40% and 26%, respectively. 

So perhaps all press can indeed still be good press even in the digital-first media environment of 2025. That said, for brands not interested in letting any negative discourse linger, swiftly issuing a public apology and implementing clear corrective action is best practice.