High school project idea · Media & Communication
Communicate during a reputation crisis without hiding, panicking, blaming, or making promises you cannot keep.
Build a credible crisis response for a realistic organization scenario using facts, empathy, accountability, and a disciplined update process.
Why this project matters
Build a credible crisis response for a realistic organization scenario using facts, empathy, accountability, and a disciplined update process. This project feels different from a school assignment because the student serves customers, employees, families, media, and community stakeholders affected by a crisis, creates something visible, tests it honestly, responds to feedback, and explains the decisions behind the final result.
What you will create
Use these deliverables as milestones for Write the Message When Everything Goes Wrong. Adapt the details to your interests, available time, and real-world opportunities.
Research known and unknown facts, affected groups, responsibility, legal constraints, internal alignment, spokesperson, rumor control, timing, and corrective action. Document the needs, constraints, credible sources, and perspectives of customers, employees, families, media, and community stakeholders affected by a crisis.
Turn the evidence into a focused plan for the crisis communications response system, including success criteria, ethical boundaries, scope, and a realistic path to completion.
Create the first complete version of the crisis communications response system. Include a crisis fact sheet, stakeholder map, holding statement, internal memo, public statement, FAQ, media Q and A, update timeline, and after-action review.
run a timed tabletop simulation with new facts and hostile questions, then test messages for accuracy, empathy, credibility, and consistency Record what happened, what failed, what users or reviewers said, and which changes you made.
Publish the final crisis communications response system with a portfolio-ready case study showing the challenge, evidence, process, revisions, results, limits, and next version.
Make the work stronger
For Write the Message When Everything Goes Wrong, use these checkpoints to protect the quality of the work without turning the project into a performance for admissions.
Skills you can build
College application value
Can demonstrate initiative, curiosity, reflection, and growth through the student’s choices, response to setbacks, work with customers, employees, families, media, and community stakeholders affected by a crisis, and development of Crisis Strategy, Stakeholder Communication, and Reputation Analysis.
The goal of Write the Message When Everything Goes Wrong is not to manufacture an impressive activity. Do real work, keep evidence of the process, and reflect honestly on what changed.
Related college majors
Use Write the Message When Everything Goes Wrong as a clue, then open a related major guide to compare coursework, career directions, reality checks, and other ways to test the field.
Write the Message When Everything Goes Wrong is an original Compass educational starting point designed around real work, visible evidence, feedback, and reflection. It is not an admissions guarantee.