when NEWS are BAD NEWS

            It is natural for a business to experienced crisis during its operations and even in the management.  As they say, you will never learn and will never grow up if you will never experience these things. It will be a matter of decision making and appropriate actions to be taken to overcome such problem. However, there are circumstances where in the company will be tested in how they will handle the situations especially when external factors will be involved, specifically, the customers and the products or services you have offered.

          One of the major crises that hit an international organization is the famous “Johnson and Johnson (J&J) Cyanide Nightmare” that happened during 1982. This may be a bit old story but citing this crises and how they handle it is a good example on how they handle their communication effectively in the midst of this issue.

        J&J is famous and well known for their high-strength pain reliever capsules known as the Tylenol. Tylenol medication serves 35% of the US-over-the-counter analgesic market, which represents almost 15% of the company profits. However, during this year, the product more become famous when they faced the organizations worst nightmare. Seven (7) people tragically died from store-bought Tylenol capsules that had been laced with cyanide. It seems that, during the incident, one individual succeeded in lacing the drug with cyanide, resulting to deaths and a widespread panic ensued about how widespread the contamination might be. Everyone knew that Tylenol is already associated with fear and scare. Due to this incident, the company’s market value fell by $1bn. To address the issue, the company’s used and went all in the customer centric approach, ignoring the cost that they may incur just to handle the case and acted quickly. They recalled $100m worth of Tylenol, from every outlet not just those in the state where it had been tampered with. In addition, the company decided the product would not be re-established on the shelves until something had been done to provide better product protection. They worked closely with the FBI to study and investigate the case and offered up a $100,000 reward for information on the killer. In terms of packaging, to prevent the tampering of the products, they launched and introduced tamper-proof packaging that would make it much more difficult for a similar incident to occur in future. In doing such action, the cost was high; however, the company won praise for its quick and appropriate action. While discovering the problem, they did not hide nor deny the problem, instead the accept it openly and immediately sought to remove any source of danger based on the worst case scenario - not waiting for evidence to see whether the contamination might be more widespread. They ensure that appropriate measures were taken which would prevent as far as possible a recurrence of the problem. And, the most important thing is they build a basis to establish the trust of their customers by showing to them and to themselves that they were prepare to bear any short term cost in the name of their consumer safety. The company had recovered 70% of its market share for the drug within five months of the crisis and in fact they have improved and succeeded in preserving the long term value of the brand. The company effectively and successfully handle the disaster.

            In my end, admitting ones mistakes is very hard especially when all the fingers were pointing on you and you have done nothing wrong in the first place. However, being open minded is the best thing to do, same with what J&J did. Gaining and maintaining the trust of the customers is the main priority of the company by establishing how they were prepared in reaching out to their customers by taking away their fears in using the product. Without any doubts and hesitation, they recall all their products which are a brave move for the management. Just think how much loss and cost they will incur in doing such decision, and yet they made it to assure their customers. It’s the best way of communicating to your customers through taking quick actions in case like this. Just like what Peter Drucker said, ‘the most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said”. And for that, I salute them for doing a great job.

           

Resources:
http://blog.rdpr.co.uk/5-great-crisis-communication-examples
http://mallenbaker.net/article/clear-reflection/johnson-johnson-and-tylenol-crisis-management-case-study