You might not be able to stop a crisis hitting, but you can control your brand’s reputation going into that crisis.
Using a combination of long-term public relations work and consistently delivering on your promises and sticking to your brand’s values, you can create a brand that people trust.
The resilience that this trust creates is evident in crises such as the hack suffered by British retailer Marks & Spencer in 2025.
As Insignia’s Jonathan Hemus points out in the most recent episode of What Just Happened?, while the crisis did cause an understandable drop in the M&S share price, it recovered relatively quickly.
The brand’s crisis response wasn’t perfect, and that’s reflected in the ups and downs of the share price since the incident.
It rose and fell tracking every new development in the crisis – from online services going down, to the delayed announcement that customer data was compromised, to media predictions of a slow recovery, announcing loss estimates of £300m and the eventual return of business as usual.
Yet, M&S also saw its market share grow, an increase of 5.9% year-on-year in the 12 weeks to 7th September 2025. And it went on to experience a record performance at Christmas, seeing food sales increase by 6.6%.
Trust made all the difference
The Institute for Customer Service published data in July 2025 showing that M&S Food was ranked second for customer satisfaction in its 2025 survey, while the overall M&S brand ranked fourth. While John Lewis did replace it as the retailer customers were most happy with, it seems that people were still happy with the business overall, despite its troubles.
Marks & Spencer was founded in 1884 and has been part of many people’s lives for generations. People remember going there with their parents and grandparents, many get their Christmas food from there and it’s always had a reputation for quality (especially M&S Food).
Many people trust the brand. That trust isn’t going to vanish overnight because of one incident.
If this had been another brand that had less of an established relationship with the consumer, they may have had a rockier road to recovery.
Building trust is something that takes considerable time and effort, and you might not see the results straight away, but relationships are tested during a crisis and established, happy ones have a much better chance of weathering the storm.
