If your crisis comms “tick all the boxes”… why do they still fall flat?

Most organisations have a crisis communications template sitting somewhere. It usually has five steps, placeholder text, and gets approved by legal, signed off by leadership, and sent the moment something goes wrong.

Here's what a typical template looks like:

[Company] is currently experiencing [a disruption to operations / a service interruption] affecting [specific market / route / facility]. We are aware of the impact this is having on [customers / end consumers] and have activated our [contingency protocols.] Our teams are working around the clock to [restore normal service / resolve the technical issue]. We are in direct contact with affected customers and will provide updated timelines as the situation develops. We thank [our customers] for [your/their] patience and understanding during this time.

The structure is sound:

• Naming the issue

• Acknowledging the impact

• Reassuring action is being taken

• Setting expectations and a timeline

• Thanking customers for their patience

It ticks every box. Technically correct, universally approved, but if you just fill in the blanks, by the time your message travels from structure to audience, it's been drained of everything human and lands emotionally flat.

They get read, but not felt. Understood, but not trusted. Seen, but not remembered.

That's because your audience isn't reading your message the way your organisation writes it. They're reading it through a very different set of filters:

How does this affect me? Do I trust this? Do they understand my frustration?

And a message built for internal approval rarely survives those questions intact.

Which is why McDonald's response to an egg shortage is worth paying close attention to. It uses the same template everyone has, but they translate it for their audience, not the company.

The situation: a very real “crisis”

McDonald’s had to pause its Breakfast Wrap due to an egg shortage.

Not catastrophic. Not even reputationally dangerous.

But still a disruption. So they did what every company does.

They issued a statement.

And opened with:

“We’ve got egg on our face”

From there, they:

• Explained the shortage

• Acknowledged the inconvenience

• Reassured customers that they were working on it

• Gave a rough timeline (“hopefully next week”)

• Thanked customers for their patience

Which is exactly the point. When you strip away the tone, it's textbook crisis comms.

The structure didn't change. The delivery did.

Every element McDonald's uses exists in the standard corporate playbook. What's different is how each one was written.

Let's map it side by side.

The message didn't start with "Dear Customer."

That's not a small detail. It's the first signal that this message wasn't written for everyone — it was written for you, specifically, if you're the kind of person who has a breakfast order you care about.

"Dear Customer" creates distance. It tells the reader they're one of many, that this message was assembled and distributed, that somewhere in a building they'll never visit, someone filled in a template. It's accurate, but it's also cold.

"Dear Breakfast Wrap fans" does the opposite. It assumes familiarity. It acknowledges that the people reading this have a relationship with the thing that's missing, whether it's a preference, a habit, or maybe a small ritual. It treats frustration not as an inconvenience to manage but as evidence that they care.

And when you open that way, everything that follows lands differently. The egg pun doesn't feel like a PR stunt. The apology doesn't feel hollow. The thank-you at the end doesn't feel like a formality. Because from the very first line, the reader has already been told: we know who you are, and we're talking to you.

Naming the issue

What most companies write: “We are currently experiencing a disruption…”

What McDonald’s wrote: “Turns out the return of our iconic Breakfast Wrap has been so popular,  it’s created a shortage of a key ingredient....”

Same job: name the issue clearly

Different delivery: human, specific, understandable

Acknowledging the impact/inconvenience

What most companies write: “We understand the impact this is having…”

What McDonald’s wrote:“We understand that it’s no yolk to have your breakfast plans disrupted…”

Different delivery: emotionally recognisable (and on-brand)

Reassuring action is being taken

What most companies write: “Our teams are working around the clock…”

What McDonald’s wrote: “We’ll soldier on, working tirelessly to bring it back.”

Same job: signal effort and urgency

Different delivery: simple, believable, non-corporate

Setting expectations and a timeline

What most companies write: “Normal service will resume by [timeframe]”

What McDonald’s wrote: “Hopefully next week.”

Same job: set expectations

Different delivery: honest uncertainty, no overpromising

Thanking customers for their patience

What most companies write: "We thank our customers for their patience and understanding during this time."

What McDonald’s wrote: “We thank every single fan of the breakfast wrap.…for your egg-ceptional patience and understanding.”

Same job: close the message with gratitude and leave customers feeling seen.

Different delivery:  "Our customers" is a category. (Same as how they didn't open with the usual Dear Customer) "Every single fan of the Breakfast Wrap" is a person. It makes you feel seen. The thank-you isn't directed at a group. It's directed at you, specifically, if this thing matters to you. The person who has a morning routine, a small ritual they've been denied.

Patience, in most crisis statements, is something companies ask for and then thank you for giving, as if it were a transaction. Adding "Egg-ceptional" acknowledges the audience's effort with a smile rather than a formality.

There are a few other things I want to give a special mention:

Matching tone to stakes

McDonald's matched the tone to the actual severity of the situation.

This wasn't a safety incident. It wasn't a data breach or a financial scandal. It was breakfast. So they didn't overcorrect into corporate seriousness. They kept it light — but they stayed accountable.

That balance is harder than it looks. Most organisations fall into one of two failure modes:

Over-formalising — treating every disruption like a catastrophe, which makes the response feel detached and disproportionate.

Over-casualising — reaching for humour without the authority to back it up, which undermines credibility.

McDonald's sat right in the middle: clear, responsible, and still unmistakably themselves.

A quick note on humour:

This is where the wrong lesson gets learned.

People read this and think: "We should make our crisis comms more playful." No. If a bank wrote "we've got egg on our face" during a systems outage, it would land very differently. The lesson isn't about adding humour. The lesson is to match your tone to your audience, your brand, and the weight of what happened.

The Bottom Line for Your Crisis Comms

Most companies write to protect themselves first and reach their audience second. McDonald's reversed that, and it shows in every line.

Your template isn't the problem. McDonald's used it exactly as intended, to make sure nothing important got missed. But they understood something most organisations don't: the template is the floor, not the ceiling. You follow it, so nothing falls through. Then you translate it so your message lands.

The result, when you get it right, is a message that doesn't read like it was assembled by 5 different departments. But rather it reads like it was written by someone who knew exactly who was on the other end, and was genuinely a little embarrassed to have let them down.

There's a simple test for this. Remove your company name. Could this message belong to any organisation? If yes, that's the part that needs rewriting because when your message could come from anyone, it doesn't come from you.

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