A Look Back at the Tylenol Crisis

Early morning, on this day, 39 years ago, 12-year Mary Kellerman, from a Chicago suburb, complained of a sore throat and runny nose. Her parents gave her one extra-strength Tylenol capsule.

But by 7 am, she was dead.

That same day, 29 September 1982, a 27-year-old postal worker named Adam Janus of Arlington Heights, Illinois, died of what was initially thought to be a massive heart attack. His brother and sister-in-law, Stanley, 25, and Theresa, 19, of Lisle, Illinois, rushed to his home to see and console the gathering of family and friends.

They both experienced throbbing headaches, not an uncommon response to a sudden death in the family, and they took a Tylenol extra-strength capsule each. It was from the same bottle Adam had taken a little earlier in the day.

Stanley died on the same day. Theresa died two days later.

Also, on the same day, in a nearby place, Mary Reiner had had a headache after giving birth to a baby. She was given a capsule to lessen her pain. It was a Tylenol extra-strength capsule. She died too, on the same day.

Seven people died in four days, in the same city after consuming the same capsules.

Actually, it was not until a couple of days later that the investigators found the shocking connection between the deaths and the capsules taken by the victims.  More importantly, the investigators quickly called them “murders”.

These were not accidental deaths by spurious medications. These were deaths caused by someone who laced the capsules with the lethal Potassium Cyanide! It was a deliberate deadly contamination by someone completely devious and demented.

Now, as we remember, on this day, that nationwide panic in the USA, we should also remember the great lessons learnt by the corporate world, on the handling of the media amidst this huge crisis; a crisis that became known as the Tylenol Crisis, and as a business management case study in universities. 

We must appreciate how Johnson and Johnson recalled some 31 million Tylenol products from all grocery stores and pharmacies around the world, and destroyed them; a total worth of $100 million which, forty years ago, was a lot of money.

Some may say that Johnson and Johnson went overboard. But there are many others who say that the company took the right response. It even changed the way medications are packed.

According to pbs.org, “Before the 1982 crisis, Tylenol controlled more than 35 percent of the over-the-counter pain reliever market; only a few weeks after the murders, that number plummeted to less than 8 percent. “The dire situation, both in terms of human life and business, made it imperative that the Johnson & Johnson executives respond swiftly and authoritatively”. And respond they did, and swift it was.

This classic corporate communications example used in business schools around the world gives us a valued lesson on how companies must hold on to their values.

Alan Hilburg, the US-based communications and branding consultant, was the guru who crafted the then extremely innovative response to the Tylenol Crisis.

He says in a recent article online that “Crisis management is not about public relations driven ‘damage control’. It’s about business continuity. About affirmative strategic, business-centric actions with a strong focus on the victims in a crisis”.

Unless organizations respond quickly, honestly and decisively to its customers and stakeholders, especially the aggrieved ones, they won’t be seen as those that can build – or as in the case of Johnson and Johnson - rebuild trust and loyalty.

These days, with the high speed of social media communication, and the growing popularity of customer reviews, customers’ needs can be easily understood, and based on that customer experience can be enhanced.

It is of course easier said than done. But, it can be done.

Comic Books – Do they promote stereotyping?

The news that comic books of Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke were burnt, along with many others, in Canada is both, shocking and upsetting.

These comic books were the Netflix of my school days.  I had grown up with all those characters, and their friends and families, and I still feel I know most of them personally. And, that’s why it saddens me that, these days, some new-age activists think it is okay to burn those books.

It was a symbolic burning, by a council of schools in Ontario, to show disapproval, for the way indigenous people were negatively portrayed in them. But I find it completely unnecessary and absolutely irrelevant.

The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed this controversy saying, "On a personal level, I would never agree to the burning of books."

But, strangely, at a government level, he allowed it. He allowed this ridiculous burning of books in this 21st century! A practice we thought was long relegated to medieval history.

In the 1953 dystopian novel ‘Fahrenheit 451’ we have seen books being burnt by an authoritarian regime, in order to thwart independent opinion.  Book-burning has always been a direct assault on the minds of free-thinking men.

In fact, this novel’s writer Ray Bradbury titled it so because it is exactly at this temperature that paper catches fire, and burns.

Now, while I agree that, in books, certain communities may be negatively portrayed, based on the writers' knowledge – or the lack of it – and also on the writers' prejudices, we must also understand that often it is only a perspective. Sometimes it is in fact the perspective of the writer’s characters; and not even that of the writer.

For instance, the cowboy Lucky Luke fights some seemingly lazy, and at the same time, brutal Indians - the Native Americans of the Apache. Does that mean we become disrespectful of the Apache, and generalize them as only lazy and only savage?

According to the stories, he actually shoots faster than his own shadow. Does that mean we believe it??

It is for us to apply our own knowledge and wisdom to discern the truth. And our discernment skill can only increase when we are exposed to a range of differing perspectives.

In Asterix comics, there is strong caricaturing of the Gaulish people, Goths, Arabs, Egyptians, Romans, and even Indians.  But it actually opens up our minds to the reality of our differences; so that we can accept and embrace our differences.

Agreed, that when writing ‘Tintin in Congo’ , the Belgian writer Hergé, had not yet matured into a good cartoonist and storyteller. In fact, he had even later apologized for the way he had characterized African people, with some racist slurs, in his second book.

But, over time, his stories matured, and there is a beautiful intermingling of cultures, and a great appreciation for differences in his latter books.

For instance, I was fascinated by Tintin’s friendship with a Chinese boy named Chang in ‘The Blue Lotus’ and in ‘Tintin in Tibet’. Similarly, in ‘Prisoners of the Sun’, Zorrino, an indigenous Peruvian boy who makes a living by selling oranges, becomes a good friend of Tintin.

The boy Abdulla is seen as a spoilt brat of a wealthy Emir, from an Arabian country. This boy appears in “The Land of Black Gold” and “The Red Sea Sharks” , and despite his pranks endears himself to Tintin's companion Capt. Haddock.

Some stereotyping is often visible to us, but we should accept it as poetic licence given to writers. We should not be blind to truth, by accepting silly stereotypes.

Burning these books on the pretext of stereotyping, I think, is just like banning ‘Tom and Jerry’ cartoon animations, for violence. 

Both are merely exaggerations with intent to entertain and educate.