Tylenol Scare

3 Pages 638 Words

In the fall on 1982, seven people died mysteriously around Chicago’s West Side. Officials determined that each person who died had ingested an Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule, a product of the Johnson & Johnson Company, laced with cyanide. The news of the Chicago deaths spread quickly and caused a nationwide panic with the public. These poisonings made it necessary for the Johnson & Johnson Company to launch a public relations program to restore a good image in both their product and their corporation as a whole.
Public Relations is defined as “the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the public on whom its success or failure depends” (Broom, Center, Cutlip, 1). Keeping a good relationship with the public was exactly what the Johnson & Johnson Company tried to do. Officials of the company made it clear that the tampering of the Tylenol capsules had not taken place at its plants. A spokesman for Johnson & Johnson told the media of the company’s strict quality control and said that the poisonings could not have been performed in the plants. Because the cyanide laced Tylenol had been discovered in shipments from both of the company’s plants and had only been found in the Chicago area, authorities concluded that any tampering must have occurred once the Tylenol had reached Illinois.
After the crisis, Johnson & Johnson faced a dilemma. They needed to find the bet way to deal with the tampering incident without destroying the reputation of their company and their most profitable product, Tylenol. The company immediately alerted consumers across the nation, via the media, not to buy or ingest any type of Tylenol product. They told consumers not to resume using the product until the extent of the tampering could be determined. Johnson & Johnson, along with stopping the production and advertising of Tylenol, recalled all Tylenol capsules from the ...