Senior counsel when the stakes are highest
Clear judgment in moments that matter
Outcomes that build reputation
Australia’s senior crisis communications consultant and reputation management adviser, working with CEOs for reputation management, crisis PR, and issues management across Australia since 2002.
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About
Wilkinson Group is one of Australia’s most experienced crisis communications consultants and reputation management consultancies. We provide senior counsel to CEOs, internal PR, boards, and general counsel across Australia. We are small by design and senior by necessity. The work we do cannot be delegated to a junior team.
Wilkinson Group is a trusted crisis PR agency, Australia's senior crisis communications and reputation management consultancy, and a respected issues management adviser. When the stakes are high and the margin for error is low, CEOs, internal PR, boards and general counsel call us.
We provide senior counsel across three areas: reputation management, Wilkinson Confidante, our retained advisory service, and crisis communications. Each is explained below.
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Crisis Communications
When a crisis breaks, credibility is the first casualty, and nimbleness decides what happens next. As a leading crisis communications consultant in Australia, Peter Wilkinson has spent 24 years helping organisations navigate the moments that test them most, from data breaches and media pile-ons to product recalls, court cases and inquiries, activist pressure, issues management challenges, and major incidents. When the pressure is highest, that experience is what keeps a bad day from becoming a defining one.
A crisis can escalate in hours, fuelled by a sceptical public, social media, competitive deadlines, and reactive politicians.
Recovery is rarely just a communications challenge; it often demands confronting, disciplined change. We help leaders regain control, get ahead of the narrative, and make decisions that stand up to public, media, and legal scrutiny. No layers. No churn. Just senior counsel moving fast, thinking clearly.
We help you lead through it and come out the other side with your reputation not just intact, but stronger.
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REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
Reputation isn’t built in a crisis. It’s built in the years before one.
Trust comes from doing what you said you’d do, consistently, across every stakeholder who’s watching. Culture, communication, and expectations lined up before the pressure arrives. Not after.
That’s the work we do with boards and CEOs. We help them spot reputational risk early and act on it before it escalates. We make sure trust is already in the account when it needs to be drawn on.
Wilkinson Confidante
Wilkinson Confidante exists at the intersection of two scarcities, senior human judgment and trust, just as AI makes almost everything else plentiful.
It’s a deliberately an intimate, retained relationship. We work with a select group of organisations over the long term, so we understand your business deeply, not just your last headline, and help you build reputation before you ever need to defend it. That means aligning behaviours, communications, and culture with what your customers, employees, and community actually expect of you.
For CEOs, boards, general counsel, and comms professionals, Wilkinson Confidante delivers Reputation Building, Crisis Preparedness, and Risk Intelligence in one ongoing engagement. Experience delivers the counsel, AI delivers the intelligence, and the relationship strengthens both.
What They’re Saying About Us
”Peter Wilkinson (Wilkinson Group) brings not only enormous experience to assessing media and broader external communications challenges facing resource companies, he brings a keen ability to ‘cut to the chase’ and identify what it is required to enhance a company’s or project’s reputation and what messages will resonate with different key project stakeholders.
Simon Eldridge
”Peter has always been an approachable, professional and diligent person to work with and well understands working to deadlines from his many years of experience working in the media. I would not hesitate to recommend Peter to other organisations seeking to have a strong strategic advisor.
Anne Bryce
Peter is Managing Director of Wilkinson Group & Past Chair of Wilkinson Butler.
Based in Sydney, Peter provides crisis communications consultant services and CEO reputation management counsel to organisations across Australia and internationally, covering crisis PR, issues management, and reputation management from his Sydney base.
He has spent 24 years advising boards and senior executives through crises and complex reputation challenges drawing on 30 years prior experience as a journalist.
That combination deep practitioner judgment and the ability to understand how media, public opinion, and stakeholder dynamics interact defines his advice.
Peter is a member of Reputation Advisors International, a global network of crisis and reputation professionals, and is a past Chair of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, which advocates for media freedom in Australia and the Asia Pacific.
Peter’s skill is ensuring boards and executives can handle a crisis with confidence.
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