How AWS Turned an Outage into a Masterclass in Crisis Communications

By Kim Brown, APR

When Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced an outage yesterday, it sent ripples across the digital world. Countless companies, from startups to Fortune 500s, depend on AWS to keep their businesses running. What stood out to me wasn’t the disruption, it was how AWS communicated through the crisis.

From the moment the issue surfaced, AWS used its Service Health Dashboard to provide consistent, public updates. Each post was clear, timestamped and written for the average person to understand. They didn’t wait until they had every answer before saying something. Instead, they prioritized trust and transparency, sharing what they knew, what they were doing and when the next update would come.

In total, AWS posted more than two dozen updates with the last one promising a post-event summary to be shared. This is textbook crisis communications. In moments of uncertainty, silence breeds speculation. AWS knew that with millions relying on their service, a loss of trust could be far more damaging than temporary downtime. Their decision to communicate early and often demonstrated confidence, preparedness and respect for their users.

And to prove their strategy worked, take a look at Amazon’s stock price today. AMZN  stock surged nearly 3% one day after the servers went down. Compare this to the CrowdStrike incident of July 2024 when Windows-based systems went dark, CRWD stock dropped 11%. There are a lot of factors at play, but trust is a big one.

To maintain trust, AWS didn’t wait for a major outage to figure out how to respond. They had a plan, a team and a protocol in place long before the crisis hit.

At Story and Strategy, we help organizations do the same. Crisis preparedness is the difference between chaos and control. When the crisis hits, having a plan ready to execute makes all the difference.