Crisis-Ready PR: Strategic Communication Under Pressure (Online / Remote)
1Summary
No company grows in a straight line — every organisation eventually hits a rough patch, whether financial, operational, or reputational, and how its PR team responds in that moment often matters more than the crisis itself. This is the starting point of this course by the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy: preparing PR professionals to lead through crises, not just react to them.
Participants work through the practical side of measuring and interpreting public opinion, then connect that understanding to real crisis scenarios — using persuasion theory, life-cycle analysis of past cases, and a structured view of both internal and external stakeholder interests. The course closes with problem definition, strategic analysis, and implementation techniques applied to current PR issues at local, national, and international levels.
2Objectives and target group
Who Should Attend?
- Directors, board members, and executive directors of public and private companies.
- Operations and project managers, along with senior administrative staff.
- PR directors, communications managers, and media professionals.
- Officials in government institutions with a related administrative role.
Knowledge and Benefits:
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Apply persuasion theory and public opinion research to real crisis situations, including how to run environmental surveys and interpret the data they produce.
- Identify where public attitudes originate and use that insight to shape a crisis response.
- Manage a "case management" approach to trending media issues, assessing the PR impact and developing workable solutions.
- Build and run strategies for both supportive and hostile audiences, internal and external.
3Course Content
Module 1: Public Opinion — The Foundation of Crisis Response
- Elements and significance of public opinion in PR strategy.
- Major pillars linking public opinion, PR, and media strategy.
- Models and theories of communication.
Module 2: Managing the Crisis Itself
- Emergency crisis-management skills between the organisation and third parties.
- Handling adverse media campaigns and responding to negative propaganda.
- Communication crisis and risk-management fundamentals.
Module 3: Getting Ahead of the Next Crisis
- Building proactive strategic plans for crises likely to arise within company relationships.
- Best practices for PR management in real-world settings.