On May 21, 2024, Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 from London to Singapore encountered sudden, extreme turbulence over Myanmar. The incident was tragic, resulting in one passenger’s death and dozens of injuries.
Before the plane was diverted and landed in Bangkok, the crisis was already unfolding on social media. Passengers with internet access began posting eyewitness accounts. Once on the ground, photos and videos from inside the cabin showed the immediate, shocking aftermath, and it all went viral on X, Facebook, and TikTok.
For the SIA communications teams across the Asia-Pacific region, it was a live-fire case study in modern crisis management. And one which, according to industry observers, was handled extremely well. Why? Because:
- The First 60 Minutes Were Everything: Singapore Airlines’ swift initial response shaped the subsequent coverage. Acknowledging the situation quickly, even with incomplete information, is better than silence.
- Empathy Was Their Most Important Asset: Leading with compassion for those affected built goodwill and demonstrated corporate humanity, which is essential when the public is emotionally engaged.
- Internal Alignment Enabled External Speed: The ability to respond quickly across multiple channels showed a well-rehearsed internal process. Legal, operations, and communications were clearly aligned, allowing the PR team to focus on communicating effectively.
What this event proved was that knowing the theory of crisis communications is not enough. Most PR teams have a crisis manual somewhere. But very few have practiced what to do when their CEO, legal counsel, and Head of HR are all demanding different things while the world is watching in real time on TikTok.
You cannot improvise coordination and clear-headed decision-making in the middle of a high-pressure, fast-moving crisis. The only way to build the muscle memory required is through practice. This is why simulation is no longer a “nice to have” for PR teams; it is the most effective and safest way to test your plans, align your stakeholders, and prepare your people before a real crisis hits.
Atavra.com: A PR Simulator for Crisis Comms Training
With this challenge in mind, I built Atavra.com, a sort of “flight simulator” but for crisis communications. It’s designed to move your team from theoretical knowledge to practical, real-world readiness.
Who Atavra Is Made For
Atavra is designed for any organisation that understands its reputation is both a critical asset and a significant vulnerability. Primary users include:
- In-house PR & Comms Teams: Corporate, government, and non-profit communications teams across APAC use Atavra to build and maintain a state of high readiness for potential reputational threats.
- PR and Integrated Agencies: Forward-thinking agencies use Atavra to deliver high-value crisis simulation workshops for their clients, moving beyond strategic counsel to actively build client capability and stress-test their crisis plans.
- Training Providers: Academic institutions and professional associations integrate Atavra into their PR, media, and crisis communications curricula to give students and executives invaluable hands-on experience that theory alone cannot provide.
It is particularly critical for organisations operating in high-scrutiny sectors, such as:
- Regulated industries: Finance, healthcare, aviation, and public transport, where a crisis can trigger immediate regulatory and government scrutiny.
- Major consumer brands: F&B, e-commerce, and telco companies, whose proximity to the public makes them constant targets for viral customer complaints and social media backlash.
How Atavra Works
Atavra transforms crisis planning from a static document into a dynamic, interactive experience. It’s designed to be intuitive, allowing you to move from setup to simulation quickly.
Let me take you through the step-by-step process of running a modern crisis drill.
1. Create a Crisis Campaign That Mirrors Real Life
When you first sign up to Atavra, you are the admin of your own organisation. You can then invite team members to join your org.
With your team in place, you can start building your first crisis campaign. You can model it on any number of real-world threats: an executive misconduct allegation, a mass service outage, a product safety recall, a data breach, or a social media pile-on triggered by a discrimination complaint.
Or, instead of creating a campaign from scratch, you can choose from a library of pre-built campaigns, such as a food poisoning outbreak, a diplomatic incident, a misconduct scandal in the style of PropertyLimBrothers, or more.
2. Build Personas: Stakeholders in Your Crisis Comms Universe
A crisis is a conversation between your organisation and its stakeholders. Atavra allows you to recreate this universe by building a cast of personas.
These personas can be external actors, like a persistent journalist from a major news outlet, a hostile social media influencer, a concerned regulator, or a panicked customer. They can also be internal actors, representing key figures like your CEO, the Head of HR, or frontline staff who are seeing the crisis unfold in real time.
During a simulation, real users in your team are assigned to play these personas, allowing your Head of Comms to step into the CEO’s shoes or an agency partner to play the role of an aggressive reporter.
3. Design the Campaign Events and Timeline
This is where your crisis narrative comes to life. Using a simple timeline interface, you build the sequence of events that will drive the simulation forward.
It starts with a trigger incident, such as the first viral social media post, a leaked screenshot, or an online news article. From there, you build in escalations: a flood of negative user comments, a competitor fanning the flames, or follow-up media coverage. You can also include official correspondence like emails from regulators or internal memos from concerned staff.
Example event timeline:
- T+0: An anonymous X thread alleging misconduct goes viral.
- T+10 mins: Screenshots of the thread are forwarded by employees in an internal (simulated) chat. The Head of HR’s inbox receives a formal complaint.
- T+20 mins: The investigative journalist sends an email requesting a comment for a story they are publishing within the hour.
- T+40 mins: The influencer posts a critical video commentary on TikTok, tagging your brand and asking why you haven’t responded.
- T+60 mins: A regulator sends a formal email requesting information on the company’s internal investigation process.
For each event, you configure its author (which persona posts it), its channel (a mock X post, a simulated news article, a realistic-looking email), and its timing. Events can be scheduled to release automatically or can be triggered manually by a facilitator to ensure they land with maximum impact. The key is to provide enough information for the team to act, while retaining the ambiguity and uncertainty that defines a real crisis, creating pressure points where they must prioritise and make difficult trade-offs.
4. Launch a Campaign Run
Once your campaign is designed, you’re ready to run it. Launching a “campaign run” creates a unique session with its own dedicated log. This means you can run the same crisis scenario multiple times with different teams and compare the results.
Before you begin, you assign the participating users to their specific roles for that run. A junior executive might play the role of the social media manager in one drill and an external journalist in the next, giving them a 360-degree view of the crisis.
As the simulation starts, the timeline you built activates. The first scheduled event is automatically published, and participants receive notifications on their dashboards, pulling them immediately into the scenario.
5. Let Participants Respond, Collaborate, and Adapt
Participants log into their persona dashboards, which provide a unified, real-time view of all the channels they have access to. From here, they can click into simulated platforms to see the full details of a viral post, a news article, or an urgent email.
Based on this information, they begin to respond. They can draft and submit replies directly within the simulated platforms by posting a holding statement to a mock Facebook page, composing an email reply to a regulator, or drafting an internal memo for staff.
Crucially, the simulation drives both on-platform and off-platform collaboration. While participants are posting messages inside Atavra, they are also coordinating in the real world; huddling in a meeting room or jumping on a video call to align on messaging and secure approvals, just as they would in a real crisis.
6. Dynamic Facilitation: Add Unpredictability in Real Time
A great simulation isn’t static; it adapts to the team’s actions. A facilitator plays a vital role in keeping the pressure on and ensuring the experience remains unpredictable and realistic.
Using the facilitator dashboard, they can manually trigger or delay scheduled events based on how the team is performing. If the team is too slow to respond, the facilitator can introduce new events to increase the pressure.
This enables dynamic, branching storylines. A slow, tone-deaf, or inconsistent response can lead the crisis down a more challenging path, while a swift and effective one can open up opportunities to regain control of the narrative.
7. Debrief and Evaluation
Perhaps the most valuable phase of the simulation happens after it ends. Atavra automatically and chronologically logs every single event and response from the session: who said what, on which channel, and at what time.
This complete, objective record becomes the foundation for a powerful debrief. The facilitator and participants can replay the entire crisis, moment by moment. This allows the team to pinpoint exactly where delays occurred, identify where messaging was inconsistent, and discuss missed opportunities.
These logs provide the data needed for detailed coaching, evidence-based feedback, and the documentation of improvements for leadership and compliance teams, turning every simulation into a concrete learning opportunity.
Get Started For Free
Theory is valuable, but practice is decisive. Moving from discussing crisis readiness to actively building it can be done faster than you think.
Atavra provides multiple pre-built campaign templates that you can run for free. These simulate crises like a food poisoning outbreak, a misconduct scandal, or a diplomatic incident during an international sports event.
Visit Atavra.com today to sign up and run your first crisis simulation
Leave a Reply