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Rippling, Deel, and a new era of Crisis Comms ⚖️
Ash + Lizzy
March 22, 2025
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HR platform Rippling filed a lawsuit this week accusing their competitor, Deel, of corporate espionage.
The details are wild—deception, honeypot traps, spies in bathrooms. But maybe more wild is Deel’s response. Deel emphatically denied all wrongdoing and even insinuated that Rippling was doing this to distract from their own business challenges:
“Weeks after Rippling is accused of violating sanctions law in Russia and seeding falsehoods about Deel, Rippling is trying to shift the narrative with these sensationalized claims. We deny all legal wrongdoing and look forward to asserting our counterclaims.” - Deel spokesperson
Even a few years ago, you would have seen a very different PR playbook being rolled out: Vague statements, promises to investigate going dark, maybe even preemptively apologizing or parting ways with the CEO. But in 2025, Cancel Culture has been canceled, and companies are going to the mats.
Posting through it
At the height of ‘cancel culture’ (2017-ish), a scandal like this would have resulted in an immediate firing of the CEO. In fact, Rippling CEO Parker Conrad was fired as CEO from his last startup for an unlicensed broker scandal in 2016.
But in the last few years, there’s been a big swing away from immediate ‘cancellation.’ For a while, the crisis playbook leaned towards a light acknowledgment of the error via Notes app screenshot or Medium post before quietly moving on. Now, we’ve moved into an era where the new playbook, for individuals at least, has been to post through it or go immediately on the attack.
Health and wellness guru Andrew Huberman famously didn’t acknowledge a viral New York Magazine article that painted him in a negative light. Just today, the longevity advocate Bryan Johnson hit back at a negative NYT article that he didn’t agree with.
Regardless of whether either of those articles was fair, the responses are markedly different from what you would have seen a few years back.
How to Crisis PR
So what does this mean for companies, startups, and corporate PR? Deel is one of the first startups to take this route with a scandal that’s gotten this much attention. It remains to be seen how this decision will play out for them.
X had a field day with the news the day the lawsuit was announced, but in the last few days, there’s been little online chatter or follow-up news coverage. However, as HR Brew points out, these two companies have access to incredibly sensitive customer data. This isn’t a scandal about an influencer’s personal life; it’s potentially serious corporate malpractice.
So what do we recommend if you find yourself facing a crisis like this?
Consult a comms team before responding to the press: Deel’s team clearly thought through their response before sharing it with the reporter who broke the news. Whatever you do, make sure you’ve consulted PR and legal pros who can help avert any unnecessary missteps.
Think before you ‘apologize’: PR pro Lulu Cheng Meservey has said, ‘Never apologize if you haven’t done anything wrong’. Truthfully, it is harder to claw back an apology in this era, so you may want to give yourself time to see how things shake out before admitting publicly to wrongdoing.
Consider the attention span cycle: Deel's case shows that intense initial scrutiny often fades quickly. This will continue to come up as the lawsuit drags out, but for now, they’ve bought themselves time to develop a more robust PR strategy.
Worry first about your customers and team: Remember, your most important audiences are your customers and employees. Prioritize clear, direct communication with them - they'll remember how you treated them during a crisis long after the social media storm has passed.
We’ll be watching to see how Deel decides to play this in the coming weeks. Should be interesting!
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