Crisis-Proof Your Brand: The CMO-Led Playbook for Protecting the Customer Experience

Businesses operate in a highly interconnected world, where brand crises can erupt with little warning and spread rapidly across an endless number of channels. This year alone, we've seen high-profile incidents including a catastrophic IT outage, an entertainment company data breach, and a slew of airplane incidents—all of which damaged customer experiences and jeopardized brand trust. As more companies face the challenge of managing modern crises, it’s clear chief marketing officers have a critical role to play in making crisis management a success both during and after the event.

As the voice of the customer, CMOs and their marketing teams are expected to anticipate issues before they escalate, communicate authentically with customers, and drive alignment across the organization. But when the unexpected occurs, organizations need a playbook to guide the way. The best author for that playbook is the CMO. With the right strategy, marketing teams can help their companies survive a crisis and uphold a positive customer experience, while preserving brand reputation for the future. Here are some key components for an effective, marketing-led crisis management strategy.

Establish a Strong Crisis Communications Plan

The moment of the crisis is not the time for leaders to devise a plan. One of the most important elements of crisis readiness is being on the offensive rather than the defensive.

While the CMO and their team should own the crisis plan, it should be developed with input and alignment from other functions in the organization. It should also have clear roles, responsibilities, and rules of engagement, including a decision tree that prevents last-minute swirl.

Additionally, the crisis plan should avoid channel conflicts by ensuring customer-facing employees don’t deliver information outside the plan. Crises are not the time to play a game of “telephone.” 

By leveraging marketing’s intimate understanding of customers, crisis communications plans should deliver a clear message to customers, in multiple formats and channels so they hear the information loud and clear in a familiar, empathetic voice.

Stay Ahead With Always-On Listening

Marketers can identify and tailor these messages through listening tactics like monitoring the news and ongoing conversations with those who communicate with customers most often, such as sales. But early detection is also vital. Technology solutions play a big role here.

Marketing teams should develop a list of crisis-related keywords specific to their organization. Data monitoring tools can detect negative trends around these themes before they escalate into a full-blown crisis. For example, social listening tools analyze sentiment, engagement, and monitoring on social platforms where customers are most active. Customer sentiment tools, including Medallia and Clarabridge, use AI and machine learning for analysis across multiple customer experience touchpoints—including voice, text, customer service emails, and chat logs. These tools pinpoint concerns and arm companies with insights that inform their response strategies.

With two-way customer interaction now the norm, companies should also consider tailoring their communications by audience to ensure the message resonates with specific customer personas. By meeting customers where they are, companies can foster stronger relationships. Having the right data uncovers the insights necessary to communicate proactively, build trust, and deliver value in a way that feels personal and relevant to each customer.

Station a Command Center

When a crisis does happen, Marketing should be the command center with the CMO as its captain. They can keep things calm with a clear order of operations:

1. Make sure the company is clear on who is running the plan.
2. Get the message out quickly and transparently.
3. Know the right channels and keep the message consistent.
4. Use one spokesperson.

Marketers are best positioned to lead this “command center” because of their deep knowledge of messaging, customer intelligence, and communication channels. They can ensure the company’s response aligns with customer values and expectations to protect the brand’s reputation. They can also evaluate the marketing and advertising campaigns in play, and pull anything that could be perceived as tone-deaf. The brand may even need to launch a new campaign to address the current situation.

Alaska Airlines took this approach following the January 2024 “door-plug” incident. Its marketing team played an integral role in immediately rolling out a robust action plan prioritizing the airline’s most important stakeholders: guests and employees. Communication—including an empathetic video message from Alaska’s CEO—was swift and omni-channel. No matter what type of information someone may have needed, or in what format, Alaska was prepared. Its response was proactive and authentic, earning the airline much-deserved praise from travelers, the media, and the market. 

Follow Up, Follow Through

What happens after a crisis is just as important as what happens during one. CMOs are well equipped to assess the brand’s reputation and develop a recovery strategy that manages the narrative, minimizes misinformation, and highlights efforts to rectify the situation.

Ultimately, rebuilding brand trust requires staying true to your company’s core values and understanding why customers loved your brand to begin with. Samsung—known for electronics innovation—understood this during the 2016 recall of its Galaxy Note 7 phones due to a battery fire hazard. Samsung’s CMO led a brand-rebuilding campaign centered on transparent communication and regular updates about the recall progress. Post-recall, the electronics company implemented a brand restoration campaign highlighting Samsung’s commitment to quality and safety, culminating in the debut of the Galaxy S8; a symbol of the company's resilience and innovation. Efforts were also made to improve customer service and support to ensure the brand could continue addressing concerns promptly and effectively well into the future.

Although the crisis temporarily put Samsung’s credibility into question, the CMO-led approach helped restore consumer trust and reinforced Samsung’s image as a responsible, innovative, and customer-first brand.

Protecting the brand during a crisis requires a CMO at the helm. As stewards of the customer experience, marketers must be at the forefront of the response, using data-driven insights and proactive communication to protect their brand. By being prepared, taking the lead in execution, and following up with transparency, CMOs can turn a potentially damaging event into an opportunity to reinforce consumer trust and loyalty.

Jessica Shapiro is the chief marketing officer of LiveRamp.