Crisis PR
What is Crisis Public Relations?
Public relations—or PR, is the practice of professional communication whose goal is to build and maintain positive relationships between the organization and its many stakeholders, including the public, prospective customers, investors, partners, employees, and others. Public relations campaigns are used to drive opinions, beliefs and behaviors. Successful public relations efforts require a deep understanding of the interests and concerns of each of the company’s many stakeholders. Crisis PR, or crisis public relations, is a sub-specialty employed to protect and defend an individual, company or organization facing a challenge to its brand, reputation and business performance.
At ICM, our experts have extensive experience using public relations effectively to build and maintain positive relationships between organizations and their stakeholders. Our deep understanding of human behavior and how people react to given situations informs the strategies and tactics we employ to help our clients prepare for, prevent and mitigate the impact of crises on their reputation, business and financial strength.
Our deep understanding of human behavior informs the strategies we employ.
“I was quite impressed with the level of thought and detail that went into our crisis scenario. It gave you just enough information to give you the situation, but not enough that you were railroaded into one plan.”
January 2021


Our guiding principles in crisis communication management are honesty, transparency and empathy.
Everything we do for our clients supports these critical values. We engage directly with business leaders, legal counsel, board members and other key players to deliver communication strategy and tactics tailored to each unique situation. We focus on helping clients to say the right things, and also to do the right things, for the right reasons.

Deborah Hileman, SCMP
ICM President and CEO
CEO Expertise for Every Client
Deborah Hileman, SCMP, President and CEO. A certified strategic communication management professional (SCMP), business leader, coach and consultant with more than 30 years’ experience in public and private companies and non-profit organizations, Ms. Hileman has led high-performing communications and marketing teams in health care, manufacturing, insurance and financial services, nonprofits and higher education. Her most significant areas of expertise include strategic communications planning and reputation/crisis management, change management, employee engagement and communication training.