When a headache could have killed them: Tylenol crisis management

In the fall of 1982, seven people in Chicago died mysteriously. After the autopsies the authorities determined that all the people that died has ingested capsules of Tylenol that were laced with cyanide. Someone had tampered with the Tylenol bottle once they were on store shelves. As the news spread, Johnson & Johnson’s nightmare began. Tylenol’s market share dropped from 32% to 7% and resulted in a loss of more than $ 100 million. The company had to immediately launch a Public Relations Program in order to limit the damage done to the product and to the company.

How did J&J manage the crisis?

Phase 1: Handling of the crisis

Costumers first: the company alerted via the media consumers across the US not to consume any type of Tylenol product until the extent of the tampering could be determined.

Recall of the product: the company also stopped the production of Tylenol as well as its advertising and recalled all Tylenol capsules from the market

Exchange: after recalling all Tylenol capsules, Johnson & Johnson also offered to exchange all the already purchased bottles of Tylenol capsules for Tylenol tablets.

Phase 2: Tylenol’s comeback

Less than 2 months after the incidents Tylenol capsules were re- introduced in the market baring a triple-seal tamper resistant packaging, making J&J the first company to comply with the Food and Drug Administration mandate of tamper-resistant packaging.

The company offered coupons and created a new discounted pricing program to make consumers buy Tylenol again. They also made presentations for the medical community.

Tylenol is now one of the classic examples of a well-handled crisis.

Although there is no template for crisis management, there are some dos and don’ts:

Here are some don’ts:

- Play ostrich: say nothing and hoping that no one will know about the problem

- Start working on a potential crisis situation after it is gone public

- Let your reputation speak for you

- Treat the media like the enemy

- Use language your audience does not understand

- Address only the issues without thinking about people’s feelings

- Make only written statements

Sources:

Making a crisis worse: The Biggest Mistakes in Crisis Communications

The Tylenol Crisis: How effective Public Relations Saved Johnson and Johnson

Public Relations in wartime: Perception management or Propaganda?

PR scholars and practitioners have been trying for decades now to show that Public Relations has earned the right to be seen as a real profession now rather than just a tool of persuasion and propaganda.

However, when governments hire PR agencies to help them convince the public that war is the only solution and that war is inevitable. Do the tactics used to rally the public appeal to the individuals rationality or is it mere propaganda?

On BBC two, a documentary called Correspondent: War spin looked at how the US and the UK dealt with media management before and during the war in Iraq and concluded that the military has been successful in controlling what the media had to say about the war by using the following technics:

- Embedding journalists which was one of “the most important public relations innovation of the Iraq War” (Hiebert, 2003). This kind of reporting allowed humanizing the war as it made soldiers look more sympathetic to the audience. It also allowed the military to provide the audiences with a lot images while keeping them out from the real issues. In fact, military were able to control to some extent what audiences would see.

- Centralized press briefings: all the press briefings were held in the US central command in Doha, Qatar which allowed the military to feed the journalists the information they wanted and to retain the information they did not want to share.

- Limited facts and contexts , spin and lies as in the case of Private Jessica Lynch

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/may2003/jess-m23.shtml

For more information about Spin in War, have a look at the following video:

Not that easy to blog

Lot of people think that writing a blog is an easy thing to do. You just sign in, log on and start writing whatever you want.
If you want to write a diary and relate what is happening in your life, you can do that.
However, if you want have a real audience, and if you want people other than your friends and relatives coming back to your blog, you should choose a blogging style.


There are five main blogging styles that can be used to write a blog. These styles are not mutually exclusive so they can be combined by the blogger.

1. Expert insights

2. Breaking news

3. Me too blogging

4. Evangelist blogging

5. Top ten favorite list blogging

For more information about blogging, take a look a this slideshow:

Blogging and video workshop

View more presentations from Matt holland.