The Scenario
A popular South African fast-food chain served a customer a meal with a foreign object inside. The customer posted a video on X (Twitter) that has gone viral with 50,000 views in 4 hours. Journalists are starting to pick it up. The brand has not responded yet.
The Brief
Design a complete crisis communication playbook. Cover the immediate response (first 2 hours), the next 48 hours, and the longer-term reputation recovery. You must draft the actual social media response.
Deliverables
- A triage decision tree: how severe is this? (cosmetic issue vs health risk vs legal exposure)
- The drafted social media response (tone, content, what NOT to say)
- A 48-hour action plan with specific steps, owners, and channels (social, PR, internal comms)
- A post-crisis review framework: what to measure 30 days later to assess reputational recovery
Submission Guidance
The first response sets the tone for everything. A defensive or legalistic reply will make it worse. Show empathy first, accountability second, action third.
Submit Your Work
Your submission is graded against the rubric on the right. If you pass, you get a public Badge URL you can share on LinkedIn. There is no draft save, so work offline first and paste your finished response here.