Introduction

There is no crisis communication handbook that does not mention the Tylenol case as an example of excellence in crisis management. Some authors go so far as to assert that the communication team of the company “wrote the book on crisis control when poisoned Tylenol Extra Strength capsules killed seven and made hundreds sick in 1982” (Arnold, 2006). And in fact, the terrible details over the tragedy and consequent media tempest put the name of the brand, and the organization behind it, in the spotlight for several weeks. The popular pain reliever was suddenly associated to the idea of death – and an especially dramatic and painful death.

The Facts

Between September 29th and October 1st, 1982, seven people died as a consequence of having ingested Extra Strength Tylenol capsules in the Chicago suburban area. Especially tragic was the case of the Janus Family, from Arlington Heights, Illinois. Stanley Janus and his wife Theresa went to the Janus’ home because his brother Adam had suddenly died the day before after suffering a cardiopulmonary collapse. The three members of the family had taken the fatidic Tylenol capsules (Tiff, 1982). Four more people died in Chicago’s suburban area, among them the 12 years old Mary Kellerman, who was found dead by her parents in the bathroom in the morning on September 29th (Beck et al., 1982).

Physician Dr. Thomas Kim and John B. Sullivan, specialist at the Rocky Mountain Poison Center, very soon suspected that the cause of the deaths had been the ingestion of cyanide. And it was a firefighter, Philip Cappitelli, who linked the death of Mary Kellerman to the ingestion of Tylenol. Cappitelli contacted the paramedics who assisted the Janus family and they came to the conclusion that all dead had taken Tylenol (Bell).

The suspicions of the firefighter were soon confirmed by the blood analysis of the victims. Michael Schaffer, Cook County’s chief toxicologist, found in the confiscated Tylenol capsules around 65 milligrams of cyanide, a powerful poison, “10,000 times more deadly than the amount needed to kill the average person” (Bell).

Johnson and Johnson knew about the case before it appeared in headlines nation-wide. The first sign that something was wrong was a telephone called received by Jim Murray, one of Johnson and Johnson’s PR men. A journalist of the Chicago Tribune called him asking some trivial questions. Murray became intrigued with the call and informed his superior Robert Kniffen, the director of the powerful Johnson and Johnson’s public relations section. Kniffen called the reporter to find out what was the real reason for the call. The reporter told him openly that he was investigating the poisoning case in which the name Tylenol had appeared connected with the mysterious deaths (Fink, 1986).

The fact was that an extortionist – or simply a terrorist – had mixed cyanide in extra strength Tylenol capsules. Police supposed that the killer, probably a white male in his early twenties in 1982, took the packages from different drugstores, placed in the poisoned capsules and, after having resealed the packages, put them back on the shelves of six groceries and drug stores. One man was arrested in connection with the incident, James W. Lewis, but he was found not guilty of murder and convicted just of extortion, for which he served 13 years. Both the identity of the criminal and his true motives remain a mystery.

Johnson and Johnson had always been a pioneer in the field of strategic communication. The company had also established guidelines for critical situations. However, there was no specific plan for a tragedy of this characteristic and scope. It must be remembered that the Tylenol tragedy was the first case of tampering suffered by a large corporation in the United States. According to Lawrence Foster (1983), what saved Johnson and Johnson was its loyalty to his credo. The organization’s management created a public discourse based on the values expressed in its well published credo:

“We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses, and patients, to the mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services.”

“We are responsible to our employees, the men and women who work with us throughout the world.”

“We are responsible to the cities in which we live and work and to the world community as well.”

“Our final responsibility is to our stockholders.”

(Our Credo).

And if fact, the executive decisions and communicational actions emphasized Johnson and Johnson’s commitment to all the enumerated groups.

The first step to show that commitment was to fully cooperate with the police trying to identify the reasons of the killing. According to Fink (1986), only when the FBI had cleared up any responsibility of Johnson and Johnson, did the company start developing communication strategies to save the brand.

The Communication Moment

James E. Burke, who was Chairman and CEO (Chief Executive Officer) at Johnson and Johnson at that time, and David E. Collins, chairman of the subsidiary McNeil Consumer Labs, which manufactured Tylenol, reacted promptly to the first warning signals. They recruited 25 PR specialists to create a crisis management team that was working around the clock. Johnson and Johnson’s spokesman Robert Kniffen was put at the head of this group (Hartley, 1990). The communication expert immediately recognized the severity of the situation and was able to fathom the depth of the implications for the brand and the organization behind it: “My initial reaction was disbelief. The rest of the time I felt pressed and frantic. I felt like I never had enough time to think things through” (Beaudoin, 1988). Kniffen established a vertical communication network throughout the whole organization, which included employees and stockholders. He also created a network to communicate with external publics, like consumers or legislators (Murray & Shohen, 1992). Kniffen also made sure that the chairman was informed of every message sent by the company (Beaudoin, 1988). Finally, Kniffen turned for help to the PR firm Burson and Marsteller, pioneer in the field of crisis management (Crumley, 1990). To show the commitment with the police effort, the company offered $100,000 reward for any information that could help identify the culprit (Murray & Shohen, 1992).

The most difficult decision was, no doubt, to withdraw the product from the shelves of the retailers. On October 2nd, when the case monopolized the front pages of practically every media nation-wide, Johnson and Johnson received a call asking for $1 million to end the terror action. The FBI recommended the management of Johnson and Johnson not to yield to the extortion. Later on, the FBI arrested the extortionist and came to the conclusion that he had not been the criminal who poisoned the capsules. The final decision came when, on October 5th, a copy cat tampering was announced. All Tylenol packages were withdrawn from the shelves. The cost of the action, which was highly publicized, was $100,000 million (Fink, 1986, p.98).

Consumers

Tylenol set up a hot line for consumers with questions and doubts about the case. The line received around 30,000 calls just the first month (Fink, 1986). On October 12th, Tylenol also offered consumers to exchange its traditional capsules by tablets in a full page advertisement that was published in the major newspapers of the country (Fink, 1986, p.213). The last action directed to the general public was to offer a $2.50 coupon to everyone who called the hot line. Johnson and Johnson received, in a period of three weeks, 210,000 calls (Fink, 1986, 213).

The Press

During the whole crisis, Johnson and Johnson paid special attention to the mass media. Although he never went personally to the Chicago area, the place of tragedy, or visited the victims, the chairman and CEO (Chief Executive Officer) James E. Burke is unanimously acclaimed for his constant availability. Burke appeared on several TV shows and in TV advertisements tying to enlighten the public and informing about all steps taken by the company (Murray and Shohen, 1992). The interest of the press was particularly strong. According to Fink (1986, p.210), no event since the Vietnam War had commanded such strong media attention: “80,000 news stories in U.S. papers, hundreds of hours of national and local television and radio, and 2,000 calls to J&J seeking information” (Fink, p.209). The priority, according to Johnson and Johnson spokesperson Robert Kniffen, was to “tell what we knew as soon as we knew it” (Fink, 209).

In dealing with the media, Johnson and Johnson also committed some faux pas. For instance, Lawrence G. Foster, corporate vice president of Johnson and Johnson, declared in some interviews that there was not cyanide in any of the factories under the umbrella of Johnson and Johnson. The statement was not true. However, the cooperative attitude of the management prevented such unfortunate statements from being used by the press against the brand or the image of the company (Fink, 1986, p.210).

The return of Tylenol to the U.S. shelves, and consequently to the everyday life of the American people, was carefully prepared. Johnson and Johnson ran a series of advertisements and TV commercials trying to both inform the public about the steps taken by the company and to reassure the customers of the safety of its most popular brand. One of those commercial, the most relevant perhaps, presented Dr. Thomas Gates, director at that time of McNeil Consumer Labs. Dr. Gates announced the imminent return of Tylenol to the retailers’ shelves, painting the company as the victim in the whole affair (Fink, 1986 p.216). The recurrent motive in his discourse was the reputation of the company as warrant of credibility: “Tylenol has had the trust of the medical profession and a hundred million Americans for over twenty years. We value that trust too much to let any individual tamper with it. We want you to continue to trust Tylenol” (Hartley, 1990, p.266). The commercial was running through October and November of 1982.

The climatic moment in Johnson and Johnson’s PR strategy in its dealings with the press was the teleconference held on November 11th (Fink, 1986, p.216). It was a historic moment because the innovation presented at the teleconference would have repercussions for the pharmaceutical industry worldwide. The company introduced the triple seal safety package. With this swift strategic move, Johnson and Johnson was the first company that implemented the new federal mandate for tampering resistant package (Eggers, 2005). The new safety features introduced in the press conference were:

1 – box flaps glued shut

2 – cap and neck covered with tight plastic seal

3 – mouth with inner foil seal

4 – and the warning text Do Not Use If Safety Seals Are Broken

Opinion Leaders

It is more than probable that the communication experts in charge of the Tylenol crisis were aware of the relevance of opinion leaders and gatekeepers in the flow of communication. Anyway, they recognized that the key individuals in this special case were the physicians. They were in the situation to recommend the use of their product and to back the advice with the credibility that flowed from their expertise. Johnson and Johnson focused on this specific target audience to use them as a link between the company and the broad public. More than 450,000 messages were sent to physicians and pharmacists – an amazing number in 1982 – informing them about how Johnson and Johnson was going to implement its new safety policy. Johnson and Johnson also sent salesmen taught to make individual presentations for physicians. In addition, they gave them Tylenol tablets so that the doctors could directly hand them to their patients (Murray & Shohen, 1992).

Employees

Johnson and Johnson also tried hard to prevent the incidents from affecting the working routine in the Tylenol factories. Above all in the McNeil headquarters, the factory workers and other staff members were informed regularly of the state of investigations. To keep the morale high, some internal PR actions were taken. The company distributed buttons for them to wear with the motto “we are coming back” (Fink, 1986, p.214). But also at other Johnson and Johnson’s locations, employees were regularly informed. For this internal purpose, the company produced videotapes with ongoing updates of the investigation and the managerial decisions of the company.

Anatomy of a PR Concept – Factors of Success

As I have already mentioned, Johnson and Johnson’s strategy is regarded unanimously by PR scholars and practitioners as the “playbook for handling corporate catastrophe” (Coke’s Hard Lesson in Crisis Management, 1999). According to Robert F. Hartley (1990), the four factors of success in Johnson and Johnson’s coping strategy were:

“Keeping communication channels open”,

“taking quick (and well-publicized) corrective action”,

“keeping faith in the product” and

“protecting public image at all cost”.

Throughout the crisis Johnson and Johnson’s management’s priority was that the company be perceived by the public as completely transparent. They cooperated in all the investigations with the police and facilitated the media’s access to information. The top managers and James E. Burke, chairman and CEO of the company, were constantly available for interviews and TV appearances. The media paid back the openness of the whole organization with positive press coverage. Johnson and Johnson was always portrayed as the victim of a maniac or a terrorist. In fact, the company was the victim.

Johnson and Johnson started to work promptly on a series of corrective actions to avoid copy-cat tampering attacks in the future. They gave those actions strong publicity, so that a nationwide debate followed that changed the whole federal safety policy.

In spite of the media uproar and the uncertainty surrounding the case, the identity and the motives of the criminal, Johnson and Johnson never lost the faith in its perhaps most popular brand. In fact, most of the commercials produced and broadcast to prepare the return of Tylenol to shelves of drugstores and supermarkets emphasized the reputation of the product gained in 20 years of successfully relieving the pain of American people.

Johnson and Johnson reaped the fruit of a consistent PR strategy for many years. The crisis provided the company with the opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to the customers, community and society in general, and they took advantage of it. The image of the company suffered no dent as a consequence of the tampering tragedy. It was excellent before the tragedy, but it became even stronger afterward. James E. Burke’s motto, “be visible, be sympathetic, be responsive” (Coke’s Hard Lesson in Crisis Management, 1999), proved to be an effective PR strategy, for it conveyed the impression to the broad audiences that Johnson and Johnson was not an insensitive corporate giant, but a compassionate group of responsible citizens who put the public benefit before their own or the company’s interest.

One month after the deaths, Johnson and Johnson carried out a survey nationwide to assess the dimensions of the name’s damage. The outcomes did not augur an easy way for the company. First of all, the media scrutiny had spread the news of the deaths to all the corners of the country: 94% of the interviewees associated the name Tylenol with the poisoning. Many of them, around 87%, were well informed and knew that the company was not to blame for what happened. In spite of that, the majority of the interviewees, 61%, showed reluctance to buy Tylenol in the future. More alarming was the fact that 50% would refuse to take Tylenol in any format, even the tablets, and only 49% of the consumers who declared to be frequent users would be willing to resume the use of Tylenol. In spite of the data, Johnson and Johnson decided to save the brand (Hartley, 1990). Interestingly, in a survey published by Psychology Today, 92% of the interviewees thought that the brand Tylenol would survive the crisis (Hartley, 1990). This represents an interesting case of pluralistic ignorance, a well-studied phenomenon in mass-psychology in which the majority of the population is mistaken about what the others think or feel concerning specific issues. In this case, a vast part of the population was afraid of using the product, but most of them thought that this was a rather isolated feeling, and that the majority of the population remained loyal to the popular pain reliever. This public perception has to do, of course, with the way the media portrayed Johnson and Johnson and how the top managers presented themselves and the basic values of the company. The general opinion was that Johnson and Johnson deserved trust, although many individual were not ready for the trust, yet.

Hardly ten weeks after the product had been withdrawn from the retailers’ shelves, Tylenol reappeared in stores with the new safety concept: the triple seal package. The return was a tremendous challenge, for the name of the brand had been associated for several weeks to terms like poison or death. (Hartley, 1990) In December 1982, Tylenol had regained 24% of the competitive pain relievers market (before the crisis, it had been 37%) (Eggers, 2005). Three Months after the tragic deaths, Tylenol reached 80% of the normal sales (Murray & Shohen, 1992), and at the end of 1983, Tylenol’s sales returned practically to normality (98% of the level before the crisis) (Fink, 1986).

Conclusions

In February 1986, a new death was reported by the media, this time in the New York City area, as a consequence of the ingestion of adulterated Tylenol capsules. Diane Elsroth died immediately after having ingested two capsules of extra-strength Tylenol. The poison was, again, cyanide.

Johnson and Johnson adopted the same strategy that allowed the company to survive the crisis of 1982. It was obvious that the triple seal safety was not enough to prevent the mortal tampering of the capsules. Johnson and Johnson did not hesitate this time and indefinitely stopped the production of Tylenol capsules (Burnet, 1998).

Johnson and Johnson used the crisis to reinforce corporate identity and values. The dropping of Tylenol capsules was so strongly publicized that it could be regarded as a PR campaign in itself. The motto of the action was: Assured Safety and Company Responsibility. Johnson and Johnson offered to replace the capsules with tablets for all consumers at no charge at all and gave them coupons of $2.50. They also gave to retailers the opportunity to exchange the capsules for free (Hartley, 1990). Johnson and Johnson applied exactly the same formula to the copy cat tampering crisis that had helped them survive the 1982 crisis. The development of the crisis followed the same scheme, as well. The company appeared in front of the public as a victim of evil. In opposition to this, its managers and spokespeople were perceived as honest individuals who cared more for the public benefit than for their own or the company’s financial interest.

The way Johnson and Johnson presented itself during the crisis not just saved the name of the brand, Tylenol. The favorable effects of the strategy also spread to the rest of products and brands of the company, one of the most powerful in the pharmaceutical sector. It may sound cynical, but the human tragedy was an opportunity to put into action all the abstract values with which Johnson and Johnson had been building its corporate identity for many years. And the company grabbed that opportunity. The episode strengthened the credibility of Johnson and Johnson. The management was successful in conveying the image of an institution the public can rely on. At the end, the $100,000 million spent in the recall action could be regarded as investment in the corporate image.

Most of the steps taken by Johnson and Johnson were effective and contributed to improve the public perception of the company. The management facilitated information flow to the press, helped the police investigation and was sympathetic toward the victims’ families (It is impossible to find out the money that they paid to the families, though. There was a resolution in the litigation with the victims’ families, but the terms were never disclosed). The company did not hesitate to spend the necessary amount of money to convey the idea that the health of the consumers was much more important for them than the profits of the company. For manufacturers of pharmaceutical products, such perceived moral integrity is the key to success.

Yet, as suggested by Burnet (1998), crises differ from each other. Every crisis situation has its own dynamic, which depends of many different factors. One of the most relevant factors is, of course, whether the organization is responsible or not for any wrongdoing that negatively affects individuals, environment, or the public in general. In the case of the Tylenol tampering, the company in the eye of the media hurricane was rather the victim of a criminal action. They never were to blame for the deaths, and the public, of course, was sympathetic toward the company rather than upset or angry. The company, no doubt, did the right things to reinforce that sympathy.

This fact also helped Johnson and Johnson create a harmonious relationship with the media. The nature and dimensions of the tragedy, of course, received an unusual media attention, but the press was also sympathetic toward the company and its managerial staff. In such circumstances, and with such a favorable public and media predisposition, it would have been difficult to do something wrong. The formula used by the management of Johnson and Johnson cannot be exported by every company to every crisis situations, which is frequently suggested in most of the PR literature. The next chapter, which will deal with the environmental disaster caused by the tanker Exxon-Valdez in the Alaskan Prince William Sound, portrays a case in which, first of all, the organization caused the catastrophe. Then, the managers and communication specialists had to deal from the very beginning with hostile media and public, and also with a plethora of angry activists who saw in the case the perfect opportunity to back their claims. Of course, they also grabbed the opportunity.

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