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Public companies make substantial investments each year in brand awareness, promotion and reputation initiatives to grow their business, attract investors, customers and employees and create a favourable business climate. Yet external events or internal shortcomings that lead to organisational crisis can quickly undercut those investments in brand reputation. The management of those incidents most often falls to the communications and legal functions. It is important for marketing and communications executives to be attuned to the need for a rapid and effective response to such crises and to ensure that the natural competitiveness between communications and marketing is not a distraction during a crisis. The authors present an approach that relies heavily on everyday best practices, trust and relationship building to optimise an organisation's ability to respond to crisis quickly and effectively and that provides a road map for senior executives to build a strong communications culture that can adapt to business challenges quickly and successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]