Week 6 BOC: Tylenol scare of 1982

                                                            Tylenol scare of 1982

“In October of 1982, Tylenol, the leading pain-killer medicine in the United States at the time, faced a tremendous crisis when seven people in Chicago were reported dead after taking extra-strength Tylenol capsules. It was reported that an unknown suspect/s put 65 milligrams of deadly cyanide into Tylenol capsules, 10,000 more than what is necessary to kill a human.”

http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall02/susi/tylenol.htm As soon as Johnson & Johnson figured out the issue with the capsules and the reported deaths, a public announcement was made to warn people about the consumption of the product. The company had to figure out the best way to deal with the problem without destroying their reputation and its most profitable product. “Marketers predicted that the Tylenol brand, which accounted for 17 percent of the company's net income in 1981, would never recover from the sabotage. But only two months later, Tylenol was headed back to the market, this time in tamper-proof packaging and bolstered by an extensive media campaign. A year later, its share of the $1.2 billion analgesic market, which had plunged to 7 percent from 37 percent following the poisoning, had climbed back to 30 percent. “ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/your-money/23iht-mjj_ed3_.html  What help save Johnson & Johnson save its reputation of the Tylenol products and brand name is that it placed the consumer first and recalled 31 million bottles from the store shelves and offered to replace the already purchased bottles with the safer tablet form free of charge. “It is clear that the media played a huge role in Johnson & Johnson's public relations campaign following the seven deaths by cyanide-laced Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules. If the company had not fully cooperated with the media, they would have, in turn, received much less positive media coverage. Disapproving coverage by the media could have easily destroyed Tylenol's reputation permanently.  By creating a public relations program that both protected the public interest and was given full support by media institutions in the US, Johnson & Johnson was able to recover quickly and painlessly from possibly the greatest crisis ever to hit the pharmaceutical industry.“ http://www.aerobiologicalengineering.com/wxk116/TylenolMurders/crisis.html