Listen to this article
Bad news rarely waits for a convenient moment. A product fails, a service breaks down, a decision backfires, or information surfaces that a brand would rather keep out of the conversation. The instinct is often to buy time: investigate first, say less, and respond only when there is no other option.
But in crisis communication, waiting can come with its own cost. Once someone else breaks the story, the brand is no longer only dealing with the problem itself. It also has to react to someone else’s version of what happened, the language they used to describe it, and the first impression already forming around it. That is where stealing thunder comes in.
The Advantage Of Going First
Stealing thunder works because the first version of a story often becomes the frame people use to understand everything that follows.
When a brand reveals the problem itself, the bad news does not suddenly become good news. But the context changes. The audience is hearing it from a company that appears willing to acknowledge what happened rather than one being forced to respond after being exposed.
That distinction matters.
Research around stealing thunder has repeatedly linked voluntary disclosure with higher perceived credibility and, in some cases, less severe judgments of the organization involved. Part of the advantage comes from removing the shock of discovery. If the brand has already told you what went wrong, there is less of a second story around what it was trying to hide.
It also gives the company something that becomes increasingly difficult to recover once a crisis spreads: the chance to set the starting point of the conversation.
Owning The Problem
Going first only works if the brand is willing to actually own what happened.
KFC’s 2018 supply crisis is a good example. After switching distributors in the UK, chicken shortages forced hundreds of stores to close. The operational problem was serious, but the response did not try to soften it with corporate language. Instead, KFC acknowledged the failure directly with its now-famous “FCK” apology.
The strength of the response was not just the joke.
It worked because the brand did not pretend the disruption was smaller than it was. The apology matched the scale of the mistake, admitted responsibility, and used a tone people already associated with KFC rather than suddenly sounding like a legal statement.
That is an important part of stealing thunder: disclosure alone is not enough. If a brand speaks first but sounds defensive, vague, or overly calculated, the advantage disappears quickly.
The Cost Of Standing By It
The opposite approach shows why the first response can shape the crisis just as much as the incident itself.
After a passenger was forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight in 2017, the company’s initial response defended the crew and described the passenger as “disruptive.” Instead of containing the situation, that response widened it. The backlash intensified; United faced criticism well beyond the original incident, and its shares briefly fell enough to wipe out close to $1 billion from its market value.
More importantly, the story had changed. It was no longer only about what happened on the flight, but about how the company chose to respond when it happened.
By the time a fuller apology followed, United was no longer correcting one problem. It was trying to recover from the incident and from the perception created by its own first response.
When The Story Changes
Speaking first can help a brand control the beginning of a crisis. But that advantage can disappear quickly if the story keeps changing.
In 2023, Okta initially said a security breach had affected 134 customers. Weeks later, the company revealed that data connected to nearly all users of its customer support system had been downloaded. The update sent its shares down more than 6% and raised concerns not only about the breach itself, but about how clearly the company had understood and communicated its scope.
That is where early disclosure can become a liability. If each new update makes the original statement look incomplete, audiences may start questioning the information coming next as well. The issue is no longer simply that the situation was worse than first believed. It is that the brand’s version of the story no longer feels stable.
And once credibility starts slipping, being the first to speak matters far less than being the source people can still trust.
Credibility Has To Hold Up
Stealing thunder is not about making bad news look smaller. It is about removing the gap between what a brand knows and what it is willing to say.
That is why the strategy only works when the disclosure can hold up over time. Speaking first may help shape the opening of a crisis, but credibility depends on what happens after that: whether the facts stay consistent, whether updates are clear, and whether the brand continues to take responsibility as more information emerges.
The real advantage, then, is not simply getting ahead of the story. It is giving people fewer reasons to doubt what you say next.
In crisis management, speed can influence the narrative. But trust is what determines whether people keep listening.
