In this FIR Interview, Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz speak with crisis and risk communication specialist Philippe Borremans about his new Crisis Communication 2026 Trend Report, based on a survey of senior crisis and communication leaders.

The conversation explores how crisis communication is evolving in an era defined by polycrisis, declining trust, and accelerating AI-driven risk – and why many organisations remain dangerously underprepared despite growing awareness of these threats.

Drawing on real-world examples, including recent AI-amplified reputation crises, Philippe outlines where organisations are falling short and what communicators can do now to close the gap between awareness and action.

Highlights

AI is changing crisis dynamics: Organisations recognise risks like AI-driven misinformation and deepfakes, yet few have tested response plans or governance frameworks.
Most crises are issues gone wrong: Crises often emerge from internal behaviours and poor issue management rather than sudden external shocks.
Trust isn’t a luxury; it’s measurable: “Building trust” sounds good, but most organisations lack meaningful metrics or strategies to manage it.
Silos break under stress: Crisis readiness still lives in functional silos — legal, HR, comms, operations — making compound crises harder to handle.
Testing beats plans alone: Having a crisis plan helps, but regular, realistic testing and muscle memory are what make teams resilient.
Agility matters more than perfect data: Waiting for complete information can stall responses; communicators must be comfortable acting in the face of uncertainty.

About our Conversation Partner

Philippe Borremans

Philippe Borremans is a leading authority on AI-driven crisis, risk, and emergency communication with over 25 years of experience spanning 30+ countries. As the author of Mastering Crisis Communication with ChatGPT: A Practical Guide, he bridges the critical gap between emerging technologies and high-stakes communication management.

A trusted advisor to global organisations including the World Health Organisation, the European Council, and multinational corporations, Philippe brings deep expertise in public health emergencies, corporate crisis communication, and AI-enhanced communication strategies.

He is the creator of the Universal Adaptive Crisis Communication framework (UACC), designed to manage complex, overlapping crises. He publishes Wag The Dog, a weekly newsletter tracking industry innovations and trends.

Follow Philippe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippeborremans/

Relevant links

https://www.riskcomms.com/
https://www.wagthedog.io/
https://www.riskcomms.com/f/the-2026-crisis-emergency-and-risk-communication-trends-report

Transcript

Shel Holtz
Hi everybody and welcome to a For Immediate Release interview. I’m Shel Holtz.

Neville Hobson
I’m Neville Hobson.

Shel Holtz
And we are here today with Philippe Borremans. We have known Philippe for at least 20 years, going back to the days where he was managing blogging at IBM out of Brussels, located today in Portugal. And an independent consultant addressing crisis, risk, and emergency communications. Welcome, Philippe. Delighted to have you with us.

Philippe Borremans
No, thanks for having me and it’s good to see you both.

Shel Holtz
And before we jump into our questions, could you tell listeners a little bit about yourself, a little more background than I just offered up?

Philippe Borremans
Sure. Yeah, as you said, I mean, I started out in PR with Porter Novelli in Brussels, that’s ages ago, and then moved in-house at IBM for 10 years. So that was from 99 to, I think 2009, must be, working on, as you said, the first blogging guidelines, which then became the social media guidelines. It was a great project, I was responsible for all external comms there. And then…

In fact, moved away from Belgium, lived four years in Morocco, working in public relations on a more, a bit more strategic level. And since then I’ve been specializing in risk, crisis and emergency comms. So that’s actually the only thing I do. It’s mainly around all the things that could happen to either a private sector organization, a government or a public organization.

Shel Holtz
And you also produce and distribute a terrific newsletter on all of this. So we’ll ask you later to let people know how to subscribe to that. We thought we would start with a case study, although we are going to get into a survey that you recently wrapped up and released. there was an incident in which an executive at Campbell’s, the company that makes Campbell’s soup, claimed that the company’s products were highly processed food for poor people and that the company used bioengineered meat. He also made some derogatory remarks about employees and this surfaced and spread around. An analysis found that negative sentiment around the company surged to 70 % and page one search results were flooded with these negative narratives. And that included the AI overviews. One analysis said the ears of marketing and branding were wiped away in an instant.

And that same analysis said that one of the biggest risks that AI introduces is an inherent bias toward negative information. What happened with Campbell’s is that coverage spread really fast across social media and traditional news outlets when this email surfaced. That created a flood of new content that AI systems were happy to start ingesting ⁓ and reinforcing. So when people started searching for 3D printed meat and questions about whether Campbell’s uses real meat, AI didn’t correct those perceptions. It surfaced fragments of context. It pulled language from the company’s own website that referenced mechanically separated chicken. I don’t want to know what that means. And all of this muddied perceptions instead of clarifying things. What should communicators be doing? What didn’t Campbell’s do to protect itself from this? It really is a new reality about how information is gathered up and then shared back out?

Philippe Borremans
It makes you wonder sometimes but it does tell me that the organization probably was not investing enough in their online reputation side of things. I mean, I recently had discussion with a client, they were asking me about how do we prepare our online information so that it surfaces on AI searches and all these things. And I said, well, maybe you should already start by in your newsroom, not publish your press releases in PDF format because that is so the basics most of the time are not in place. And I think in this case, again, I mean, looking at how search engine optimization is changing, how AI is looking at information. That is crucial. It’s basics because if your online reputation is out there with the information that you have, the bias of AI, I can get it. But if you know that, again, you can work with that. And so I think the organization was simply not looking at their online side of the reputation and information dissemination.

Neville Hobson