Crisis and reputation counsel for boards
Tim Sutton is a senior reputational adviser to boards in their hardest moments. When a regulator moves, a legal fight goes public, an activist campaign lands or a story is about to break, he works directly with the people who carry the decision: general counsel, chief executives, chairs and communications directors. Principal to principal, with no team layer.
In a crisis, the outcome you are proudest of is often invisible: the story that did not run, the regulatory action that did not happen, the board decision that did not become a liability.
How I work in a crisis
There is no standing agency behind me, and no methodology to hand you. When you brief me, I write. When you need a response at midnight, I draft it. What I offer that a firm cannot is skin in the game: my reputation is on every piece of advice I give, and the judgment on your crisis is mine, not passed down a team.
I work two ways. As standing counsel, for boards that want senior judgment available on a Sunday night, when something is about to break and you need a straight answer fast. And in discreet crisis mandates, typically two to six weeks, for the moment something might break, is about to break, or already has. I work with a small number of clients at a time.
How I approach a crisis
Five patterns I see across three decades and more of board-level mandates.
The visible win is rarely the real win
Settlement figures, court verdicts and public statements are downstream of months or years of communications environment-building. The cheque value is set by the environment around it, not the other way around.
Do not accept that any signal of intention is a done deal
Public reports of a settled outcome are usually premature. There is often division inside the target firm and adjacent stakeholders with unspoken concerns. The right play may be to surface the concealed disagreement publicly, in the target's own register, rather than run private counter-lobbying that ratifies the published narrative.
Speak the world's language, not your institution's
Most institutional statements fail because they are written in the institution's vocabulary at a moment that demands human vocabulary. The words that are technically accurate are rarely the words that land.
Drain the story, do not try to win the argument
When a case is failing in the moral register, no quantity of data will undo it. The strategic frame is exhaustion of the narrative, not vindication.
Do not pursue your own interest, create a public-interest argument
Challenger campaigns lose when they make a self-interest case. They win when they make a public-interest case backed by a specific headline number.
Selected mandates
Shell and UKOOA · 1995
Brent Spar
I led communications for the UK upstream oil industry against a Greenpeace direct-action campaign over the disposal of a Shell offshore installation. Shell's scientific case for deep-sea disposal was the best environmental option available. It did not matter. We shifted the frame from winning the science to draining the story of momentum. Greenpeace ended its campaign. The episode became an early template for what is now called ESG advisory.
1991 onwards
BCCI and the Bin Mahfouz family
I represented the Saudi Bin Mahfouz family, acting for the family and not the institution, during BCCI liquidator claims, appointed by the law firm running the global legal effort. The narrative was entirely legal: there was no public understanding of Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz the person, only the defendant in a $10.5 billion claim. The inflection was an exclusive interview with the Financial Times, which I travelled to Jeddah to manage personally. From that moment, every settlement conversation took place in a different communications environment. $670 million recovered against an original $10.5 billion claim.
January 2010
Japan Airlines and the OneWorld alliance
Appointed by American Airlines, representing the OneWorld alliance, after the Yomiuri Shimbun had reported that JAL's restructuring body had decided to defect to SkyTeam. The conventional move would have been to accept that report and run a private foreign-government-lobbying campaign. We did the opposite: we engaged Japanese voices publicly, so the campaign read as a Japanese conversation about JAL's future rather than a foreign carrier challenge. JAL retained its OneWorld membership. $1 to 2 billion per year of alliance-dependent revenue at stake.
UN Women · December 2023 to June 2024
The Gaza conflict
With W Communications, I advised at UN Women board-director level through the most contested period in its modern history: two mutually hostile audiences, each demanding an incompatible story, and an institutional vocabulary at a moment that required human language. The tipping point was the 19 January 2024 hundred-day statement, with direct human language, universal moral framing and data-led symmetry. Credibility was restored with major donor governments.
British Midland · 1991 to 1994
European aviation liberalisation
I led the campaign that broke state-owned flag-carrier duopolies on European routes out of Heathrow. Years of private lobbying of Brussels and Whitehall had gone nowhere. The breakthrough came from inverting the framing, from "British Midland deserves access" to "UK and European businesses are being overcharged", catalogued route by route and aggregated into a single headline number. The campaign, "A Fair Deal?", was named Best PR Campaign in the UK in 1991.
Who I advise
General counsel, chief executives, chief communications officers, board chairs and private-equity deal leads at listed multinationals, family offices, sovereign-adjacent bodies and large law firms. The work spans pre-litigation crisis preparation, regulatory inflection points (the SFO, FCA, OFSI, sanctions exposure and supply-chain disclosure), deal-side reputational diligence, and contained-incident war rooms.
Where to start
If you are weighing your exposure before anything goes wrong, the Reputational Resilience scorecard shows where the weaknesses sit, scored area by area. If something is already moving, it is better to talk.
Common questions
Who advises boards and CEOs in a reputational crisis?
I do. I am a senior reputational adviser who works directly with boards, general counsel and chief executives through their hardest reputational moments, principal to principal and with no team layer, as standing counsel or in contained crisis mandates, across regulatory, legal, activist and media-driven crises.
What does a crisis communications adviser actually do?
The work is judgment, not press releases. It is shaping the communications environment a decision is made in, so the settlement, the verdict or the regulatory outcome lands in your favour rather than against you. In practice that means deciding what to say, to whom and when, and often what not to say, in the hours and weeks when the trajectory of a crisis is set.
When should a board bring in a reputation adviser?
Before the story breaks, not after. The trajectory of a crisis is usually set in the first 48 hours, long before the lawyers have finished modelling the downside. Boards that take counsel early pay a lower bill than those who wait for the headline.
How is independent crisis counsel different from a PR agency?
There is no standing team and no methodology to hand over. When you brief me, I write. When you need a response at midnight, I draft it. What an independent principal offers that a firm cannot is skin in the game: my reputation is on every piece of advice, and the judgment on your crisis is mine, not delegated down a team.
Tim Sutton is a senior reputational adviser to boards in their hardest moments and counsel to PR-agency principals on both sides of a transaction. timsuttonpr.com · LinkedIn