Do you spend your professional life in Crisis Management? Most of us who land in the world of public relations either studied the Tylenol product-tampering case in college, or longer-term PR practitioners watched the story break in real time, now four+ decades ago.
In case you missed that episode in American marketing history … or … you slept through your professor’s coverage of that industry-altering tragedy, in 1982, some murderous someone(s) laced Tylenol capsules with potassium cyanide then resealed the packages and placed them back on the shelves of at least six Chicago pharmacies and food stores. Seven people died in the space of a few days.
Sadly, the crisis-management wheels began to turn!
Long story short, the executives at McNeil Consumer Products/Johnson & Johnson handled the crisis so well, remarkably, Tylenol sales rebounded within a year.
What can the rest of us learn from that long-ago case when we encounter any of the varying degrees of crises that can strike any industry?
WHAT DID MCNEIL/J&J DO RIGHT?
- They spoke to the media early, often and honestly. Their CEO delivered personal, heart-felt messages.
- They acted quickly — pulling 31 million Tylenol bottles from store shelves overnight.
- They used every channel available to them and even launched new channels to get the word out — setting up toll-free hotlines, broadcasting daily updates. No denial. No scapegoating.
- They made restitution, even though they hadn’t caused the crisis – supporting impacted families and replacing customers’ already-purchased capsules with tamper-proof tablets.
- They took corrective action — revamping their packaging with triple tamper-proof protections (foil seals, tamper-evident shrink-wrapped plastic and glued box flaps).
- They put people ahead of profits, public safety and social responsibility ahead of sales – a credo the company had in place all along but which no crisis had tested before — spending $100 million+ on advertising – not to restore their image but to inform the public.
- They took steps to prevent future bad acts — posting a $100,000 reward, hoping to find the killer, which, sadly, authorities never did, however, a man who claimed to be the killer and tried to extort the company did spend 13 years in prison.
WHAT DID McNEIL/J&J MISS?
Obviously, in most ways, they earned a solid A for their handling of the crisis, however, those of us practicing today can learn from potentially costly missteps …
- J&J didn’t have a plan prior to the crisis. Today, we should name a crisis team and key spokesperson/people. Establish a chain of crisis-communications command. Train EVERYONE in our organizations how to (and how NOT to) respond to acts of terrorism (like the Tylenol case), accidents, transgressions or faux pas. Review and update the plan quarterly.
BE PREPARED … A CASE IN POINT … One national bakery brand published clear guidelines for all employees to keep within reach at all times, with step-by-step crisis-management instructions. Later, when someone reported a sharp object found in one of their products, no one panicked. They had a plan. They alerted the team, shut down production, pulled product off the shelves, alerted the media and isolated the source almost immediately. As it turned out, the problem came from outside the bakery. Sadly, a child had tampered with the product hoping his self-inflicted injury might bring his divorcing parents back together.
- J&J hadn’t fostered a positive relationship with media. Once the s#*t hits the fan, it’s too late to wish you knew some friendly reporters. News outlets often arrive on the scene first. That was the case with the Tylenol murders; a Chicago reporter alerted the company.
What held true about media in ’82 has only intensified since then. Now, consumers with their own cameras can capture a crisis from Minute One and post on social media in real time. It pays to have built a reputation for doing the right thing ahead of time.
- J&J had focused almost exclusively on advertising and marketing prior to the crisis, with no public-affairs outreach. Some observers criticized their efforts as “too slick” because they relied on advertising during the crisis versus less-scripted media interviews and news/editorial coverage.
Still … “The Tylenol crisis is without a doubt the most exemplary case ever known in the history of crisis communications. Any business executive, who has ever stumbled into a public relations ambush, ought to appreciate the way Johnson & Johnson responded to the Tylenol poisonings. They have effectively demonstrated how major business has to handle a disaster.” (Berge, 1998)
No one wants to face a crisis, but, if and when we do, we probably all hope to mimic the Tylenol-response playbook. Mastering crisis management matters now more than ever. Once a crisis makes headlines, it’ll lurk forever in the cavernous recesses of the Internet. When another, similar hazard erupts, even if long after and unrelated, our handling of our crisis (good, bad or disastrous) will pop up in searches forever after.
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