Crisis Consulting is a strategic intervention engagement for operators whose marketing operation is in active crisis. Floor of $10,000+. 24-hour engagement turnaround from intake to first containment session. Daily contact during the intensive phase. Engagement runs 2 to 4 weeks. Public PR work and legal crisis are out of scope. Stan Consulting LLC.
Home Services Project & Advisory Lane Crisis Consulting
Stan Consulting · F7.4 · Project & Advisory Lane
When the marketing operation is on fire. 24-hour engagement turnaround. $10,000+. 2–4 weeks intensive. Containment first, then a written recovery plan, then milestones, then a clean handoff.
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Briefing
Crisis Consulting is for the operator whose marketing operation is actively losing money, mid-campaign, with a real timeline pressure attached. Revenue is hemorrhaging. The agency walked off two weeks before launch. The fundraise is in jeopardy because the GTM contradicts the deck. The board has called an emergency. The acquisition closed and the combined marketing org is melting down. The work begins inside 24 hours of intake, runs daily during the containment phase, and produces a written recovery plan with milestones before the engagement ends.
What it is. A strategic crisis intervention. The operator gets fast access, daily contact during the intensive phase, written deliverables, and a clean exit. The engagement is scoped during the 24-hour intake. The floor is $10,000+. Typical engagements run $15,000 to $30,000. The cap is engagement-specific.
What it is not. Public PR work and media crisis are not part of this engagement; an outside crisis communications firm is the right call there. Legal crisis is not part of this engagement; an attorney is the right call. Ongoing consulting without an active crisis is not this engagement; the Marketing Operating Partner retainer (F3) covers that work. A single decision document is not this engagement; Decision Consulting (F7.2) covers that work. A structured scoped project is not this engagement; Project Consulting (F7.3) covers that work.
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These are scene-shapes, not named cases. The triggers below are the recurring crisis types that arrive at intake. Where the operator's situation matches one of these patterns, the engagement structure is already known. Where it does not, the 24-hour intake review establishes whether a different format fits better.
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Customer acquisition cost has run away inside a single reporting window. The attribution model is suspect. The team is running blind on which channels are actually working. The board meeting is in two weeks and the variance has to be explained.
Attribution rebuild · deadline pressure
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The agency relationship collapsed. Deliverables are incomplete. Creative is in flight, paid spend is running, the launch is in two weeks, and the internal team does not have the throughput to absorb the work without help.
Vendor collapse · launch in flight
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The pitch deck claims one motion. The marketing operation is actually running another. The lead investor's diligence team has flagged the contradiction. The close is in 21 days. Either the deck or the operation has to align before then.
Fundraise jeopardy · 21-day window
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The quarterly target was missed by 40%. The board has asked for a 60-day recovery plan with named owners and weekly milestones. The CMO seat is empty or under pressure. The plan needs to be written, defended, and started before the next board call.
Board emergency · 60-day plan
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The repositioning launch performed well below baseline. Organic traffic dropped, paid efficiency collapsed, and the sales team is reporting confusion in pipeline. The choice is partial revert plus a relaunch sequence, or absorb the loss and stay the course. The decision needs evidence.
Surgical revert · relaunch sequence
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The acquisition closed. The combined marketing org has two stacks, two attribution methodologies, two brand systems, and two sets of agency relationships. Performance has dropped during the integration. The integration plan is needed in 30 days.
Post-merger integration · 30-day plan
Floor on Crisis Consulting is $10,000+. The 24-hour intake establishes scope, surcharge, and engagement length. Operators whose situation does not match a crisis pattern are routed to Project Consulting (F7.3) or Decision Consulting (F7.2) at the intake review.
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The engagement structure is the same regardless of trigger type. The proportions shift. An attribution rebuild weights the diagnostic phase. An agency-collapse weights the containment phase. A board-recovery plan weights the written deliverable. The intake call sets the proportions.
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Intake is reviewed within 24 hours. Where fit is confirmed, the first containment session is scheduled inside that window. The diagnostic surfaces what is actually broken, what is at stake, and what the realistic recovery shape looks like.
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During the intensive phase, daily contact means a scheduled working session each business day plus reachable contact for urgent decisions outside that session. The format is set in the first session: standup plus async, or longer working blocks plus calls.
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A written recovery plan is the central deliverable. Named owners. Weekly milestones. Decision triggers. Communication structure for board, investors, or internal stakeholders. The plan is the artifact the operator hands to the next person who asks what is being done.
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If the recovery plan requires structured oversight beyond the 2 to 4 weeks, the handoff conversation outlines two paths: a tapered crisis extension at scoped rate, or a Marketing Operating Partner retainer (F3) for ongoing relationship. Open-ended crisis engagements do not happen here.
Operating principle
In a marketing crisis, calm is the deliverable. Speed is the second deliverable.
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Diagnose before acting. The first containment session is for getting the facts, not for performing motion. A wrong action under pressure costs more than a slow correct one.
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Write the plan down. The recovery plan exists in writing because crisis decisions get re-litigated under stress. The artifact is what the operator defends.
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End the engagement. A clean handoff at the milestone is the point. Crisis advisory that drifts into permanent dependency has failed at the structural level.
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The process below is the standard engagement shape. Stations 2 and 3 compress or extend with the trigger type, but the sequence is fixed. Daily contact is concentrated in the first two stations and tapers across stations 3 and 4.
Station 01 · First 24 hours
Intake form reviewed. NDA signed where required. First containment session scheduled inside 24 hours. Scope and surcharge set.
Output · engagement scoped, calendar locked
Station 02 · Days 1–7
Daily contact. Diagnostic completes. Immediate harm-reduction decisions executed. Stakeholder communications drafted. The bleeding stops in this window.
Output · situation stabilized, decisions documented
Station 03 · Days 7–14
Written plan drafted, reviewed, finalized. Named owners assigned. Weekly milestones set. Communication structure for board, investors, or internal stakeholders established.
Output · written recovery plan with owners
Station 04 · Days 14–21+
First milestone hit. Plan handed to the team or remaining vendors. Handoff conversation outlines optional ongoing oversight or clean stop. Engagement ends.
Output · clean handoff or scoped extension
The 2 to 4 week intensive phase covers stations 1 through 4 in standard form. Where station 3 or 4 requires more time, the engagement either extends at scoped rate or transitions to F3. The base floor of $10,000+ covers the intensive phase. Any extension is scoped separately at handoff.
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Honest scoping protects the operator from a wrong engagement and protects the work from drift. The intake review applies the test below before a call is scheduled.
Fit
Not-fit
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The deliverables below are produced during the engagement and handed over at the milestone. Each is written for the person who will defend the work next: a board, an investor, an internal team, or the operator's successor in the role.
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A written diagnostic of what is broken, with evidence: data, dashboards, vendor communications, internal documents. The diagnostic is the basis for every subsequent decision.
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Each immediate harm-reduction decision documented with rationale, owner, and execution date. The log is what the operator references when a decision is challenged later.
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The central document. Named owners. Weekly milestones. Decision triggers. Communication structure. The plan is the artifact the operator hands to the next person who asks what is being done.
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Drafts of board updates, investor communications, internal team announcements, or vendor notifications as required by the situation. The operator owns the message; the drafts make it defensible.
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A simple weekly tracker with named owners, status, blockers, and decisions required. The tracker is what the team uses to keep the recovery plan moving after the engagement ends.
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A short written memo at the close: what was done, what remains, named risks, and the recommended path for the next 60 days. The memo is the operator's reference for the conversation with the board, the next vendor, or the next executive in the seat.
All six artifacts are included in the base engagement at the $10,000+ floor. The cap is engagement-specific. Typical crisis engagements run $15,000 to $30,000 depending on trigger type, daily-contact intensity, and required deliverable depth.
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Project Consulting (F7.3) starts at $5,000+. Crisis Consulting starts at $10,000+. The difference is not arbitrary. It reflects three structural costs that crisis engagements carry and project engagements do not.
First, the 24-hour engagement turnaround. The calendar is reordered to accommodate intake and the first containment session inside a single business day. Other work moves. That trade-off is priced in.
Second, daily contact during the containment phase. The intensive phase is not a series of weekly calls. It is a working relationship with a daily cadence. The throughput cost is real.
Third, the urgency premium. Crisis engagements do not pause for cleaner timing or a more comfortable scope conversation. The price reflects that. Typical engagements run $15,000 to $30,000. The cap is engagement-specific, set at the 24-hour intake.
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Operators looking at a crisis engagement tend to ask the same questions. The answers below are written in advance so the intake call can spend its time on the situation, not on the format.
Intake is reviewed within 24 hours of submission. Where the situation fits, a first containment session is scheduled inside that 24-hour window. The standard engagement structure assumes daily contact during the first containment phase, then tapering as the recovery plan moves into milestones. Where the situation does not fit, the response within 24 hours is a redirect to the right engagement format or an external referral, not silence.
Crisis engagements carry a 24-hour turnaround surcharge. They require daily contact during the intensive phase, full focus while the situation is active, and the willingness to reorder the calendar to keep the operator moving. The $5,000 floor on Project Consulting reflects standard scheduling. The $10,000+ floor on Crisis Consulting reflects what compressed timing actually costs. Typical crisis engagements run $15,000 to $30,000.
No. Public PR work and media crisis sit in a different category and are not part of this engagement. Crisis Consulting is for the marketing operation itself: revenue performance, agency relationships, attribution and measurement, fundraise readiness on the GTM side, board communications about marketing performance. If the situation is a public-facing reputational crisis, an outside crisis communications firm is the right call. Stan Consulting can refer.
The engagement ends at the handoff. The recovery plan is written. The milestones are set. The internal team or remaining vendor relationships continue the work. If the operator wants ongoing oversight after the intensive phase, that is a separate engagement under the Marketing Operating Partner retainer (F3). The crisis engagement does not auto-renew. The handoff is a clean stop.
Yes. For crisis intake involving sensitive material (board context, fundraise context, agency-collapse context, employment context), an NDA is signed before the first call. The intake form captures only enough to assess fit. The substantive crisis briefing happens after the NDA is in place. This is a standard part of how crisis engagements run, not a request the operator needs to make.
Sometimes. The 2 to 4 weeks is the intensive phase. If the recovery plan requires structured oversight beyond that window, the engagement transitions to either a tapered crisis extension (still scoped) or a Marketing Operating Partner retainer (F3) for ongoing relationship. Both options are spelled out at the handoff conversation. Open-ended crisis engagements are not how this works; the operator gets a written plan and a clean exit.
During the intensive phase, daily contact means a scheduled working session each business day plus reachable contact for urgent decisions outside that session. The format is set in the first containment session: some operators want a daily standup plus async messaging, others want a longer working block every other day with calls in between. The structure adapts to the operator's calendar, not the other way around.
Project Consulting (F7.3, $5,000+) is the right engagement when the work is structured but not on fire. Decision Consulting (F7.2, $2,500) is the right engagement when the operator needs one written decision document. The intake review will route the operator to the right format. Crisis Consulting is reserved for active marketing crisis with a real timeline pressure: hemorrhaging revenue, mid-campaign collapse, fundraise jeopardy, board emergency.
Section 09 · Engage Crisis Consulting
This is a fit conversation request, not a sales form. The intake is reviewed within 24 hours. Where the situation fits, a first containment session is scheduled inside that window at the floor of $10,000+. Where it does not, the response is a redirect to the right engagement format or an external referral.
Your crisis intake is in the queue. The review window is 24 hours. If the situation fits, a first containment session is scheduled inside that window. If a different engagement format is the better fit, the response is a redirect with the reasoning. Either way, the response arrives inside 24 hours.
F7.4 · Crisis Consulting · $10,000+
The engagement begins inside 24 hours of intake. The floor is $10,000+. Daily contact runs through the containment phase. A written recovery plan with named owners and weekly milestones lands by the end of the second week. Handoff is clean: the operator owns the plan, the team executes, the engagement ends. There is no auto-renew, no quiet retainer drift, no permanent dependency. The 24-hour engagement turnaround is the structural commitment of this format.
Speed without calm is motion. Calm without speed is observation. The engagement is both.
Post-crisis recovery sometimes turns into an ongoing relationship. The Marketing Operating Partner retainer is the format for that work: structured oversight after the intensive phase, monthly cadence, named scope. It is offered at the handoff conversation when the situation calls for it, not before.
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