TYLENOL THEN, JOHNSON & JOHNSON NOW

As I sat in a doctor’s office a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but notice the parade of well-dressed, attractive young businesspeople who entered every twenty minutes or so, each carrying a briefcase.

And though each of them tried to speak very softly to the receptionist – obviously in the hopes that the waiting patients wouldn’t hear – we did hear. The brief conversations always involved a new “must-have” product or tool (medical or administrative). And they always began and ended with an invitation to lunch from the briefcase-carrier to the doctor or his nurses or staff.

As I watched the other people in the waiting room that day, I could see that they – we – were all thinking the same thing: There’s something very uncomfortable about this process. (Particularly if you’re aware that, quite often, the incentives are a hell of a lot bigger than a free lunch.)

When I read about Johnson & Johnson being accused of dragging its feet on recalling products that smelled moldy from possibly-tainted wooden pallets (and that had made some people sick), I couldn’t help thinking about the doctor’s office. And when I read the complaint accusing J&J of paying millions of dollars in kickbacks to Omnicare, a company that sells drugs to nursing homes, it sickened me. This money was (allegedly!) paid in the hopes of getting Omnicare to persuade nursing homes to use J&J medicines on our most vulnerable patients. And I thought about the doctor’s office again.

Johnson & Johnson owns the Tylenol brand. And, for those of us in the Public Relations business who are old enough to remember the early-eighties, Tylenol remains the symbol of the greatest crisis-communications response ever.

In 1982, seven people around the country died from Tylenol that had been intentionally tainted with poison, and thousands of others were sickened, some very seriously. Obviously, the company was not to blame; some sociopath was.

Yet, the company responded in a way that I still use to teach PR students the best response to a corporate crisis. Tylenol took every bottle of its products off the shelves…in the entire country. In every drug store. Every supermarket. Every convenience store. In the country.

Tylenol showed tremendous sensitivity in the face of this crisis. It encouraged its executives to speak openly to the media. And they did, in heartfelt ways, expressing obvious heartbreak about the deaths and sickness, concern for their employees and the stores that carried their product…and a determination to learn something from the incident.

Tylenol’s response had been immediate, not waffling. The response was “up-front” – there were no “no comments,” no committees that would have to study the problem for 60 days. And – in what seems an increasingly nostalgic episode in today’s world – the company actually put people above profits.

Next time you open a bottle from the drugstore, and read the label about not using the product if the bottle has been “tampered” with, you can thank Tylenol. Because they were the ones who pioneered this concept, in response to the poisoning tragedy.

I couldn’t help but think of the 1982 Tylenol incident as I read about Johnson & Johnson’s (alleged!!) cover-ups and kickbacks. And I couldn’t help but think of the doctor’s office.

Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
www.winstoncommunications.com
steve@winstoncommunications.com