The recent lawsuit by J&J against the American Red Cross has brought J&J’s communications strategy to the forefront of the debate.
The pharmaceutical industry has changed substantially since the Tylenol tampering incident of 1982. J&J was lauded for its response – open communication, transparency and decisively pulling the product in the interest of patient safety.
Since then, J&J has had problematic product withdrawals of Confide in 1997 (a home HIV test) and another Tylenol problem in 2005. And, by the way, there were the withdrawals of Propulsid and Duragesic. In each instance, the company was criticized for not acting decisively enough. J&J calls it Slow Cooking – or taking their time. Slow Cooking is fine when you are making soup.
When your products are a matter of life and death, you don’t have the luxury of taking your time. Communications can’t be a “by the way” afterthought; they need to be fully integrated into your overall strategy. If the Tylenol tamping occurred today, we would be looking at a response that would have taken weeks or months, not days.
Other companies in the industry should look at J&J, its lawsuit against the American Red Cross and evaluate how you would do things differently. J&J is in a rough spot trying to protect what it perceives to be its intellectual property (the red cross trademark). I empathize with the no-win situation they are dealing with. But no-win is different from a guarantee-lose situation. Ten years from now, we will look back on this Red Cross lawsuit in the same way we look back at Tylenol and consider this a turning point in the history of Johnson & Johnson.
The pharmaceutical industry has changed substantially since the Tylenol tampering incident of 1982. J&J was lauded for its response – open communication, transparency and decisively pulling the product in the interest of patient safety.
Since then, J&J has had problematic product withdrawals of Confide in 1997 (a home HIV test) and another Tylenol problem in 2005. And, by the way, there were the withdrawals of Propulsid and Duragesic. In each instance, the company was criticized for not acting decisively enough. J&J calls it Slow Cooking – or taking their time. Slow Cooking is fine when you are making soup. When your products are a matter of life and death, you don’t have the luxury of taking your time. Communications can’t be a “by the way” afterthought; they need to be fully integrated into your overall strategy.
If the Tylenol tamping occurred today, we would be looking at a response that would have taken weeks or months, not days.
Other companies in the industry should look at J&J, its lawsuit against the American Red Cross and evaluate how you would do things differently. J&J is in a rough spot trying to protect what it perceives to be its intellectual property (the red cross trademark). I empathize with the no-win situation they are dealing with. But no-win is different from a guarantee-lose situation. Ten years from now, we will look back on this Red Cross lawsuit in the same way we look back at Tylenol and consider this a turning point in the history of Johnson & Johnson.