Effective communication case study analysis

¶ … Tylenol Rides it Out and Gains a Legacy" is emblematic of how good public relations can turn a weakness or error into a boon for the company. In 1982 it was found that several individuals died because of cyanide detected within capsules of Tylenol, this led to a massive recall of all Tylenol products that eventually cost the company 50 million dollars. The same tragedy occurred two years later that resulted in a recall of 80 million dollars of damages. In both cases, Johnson and Johnson came out with a better reputation for integrity than before and their image in the public's eye improved as a result of the steps they took from both an operations perspective as well as a public relations perspective.

There were both internal and external audiences within this particular case study. The internal audience was the employees of the Johnson and Johnson Company as well as the Food and Drug Administration who closely worked with Johnson and Johnson to ensure that the problem could be adequately solved. The internal public were very important in this case because J&J and had to convince their employees that there products were safe and to somehow inform the individuals involved that their actions would not result in a substantial loss for the company. At the same time, the Food and Drug administration played a crucial role because they were convinced by J&J that they would take all steps to prevent damages to the consumer. This was evidenced by the FDA's continued notifications to the public that J&J were doing all necessary steps to prevent any more damages to partners. The external audience were the consumers themselves, they had to be convinced to trust that J&J took all necessary steps to prevent their products from being contaminated and to continue using Tylenol in the future.

Communications from J&J took the shape of many different media outlets. They communicated through internal newsletters to their staff updating them on what was happening with the product line and how this problem impacts their company. This decreased the feeling of panic among employees of the nature of the crime committed. They also used press conferences, commercials and news outlets to communicate with the public to assure them that all steps were being taken to prevent the problems associated with contamination. Furthermore, they communicated effectively with the FDA so that a third party would be involved in helping them calm public sentiments. The impact of their communication is that consumers trusted the fact that J&J were not responsible for the actions that occurred and moreover that they were doing everything possible to prevent this crisis from happening again. This implicit understanding dramatically helped the case of J&J and allowed them to gain significant consumer trust and loyalty. This message could not have been communicated any more efficiently. They not only communicated to calm internal audiences, but also solved their external PR issue by relying upon their own PR campaign as well as the help of the FDA.

The different PR communication tools and techniques used by J&J culminated in their successful campaign. The most important tool used by J&J was a news outlet to spread the news of the steps that they were taking to prevent future occurrences and to redeem there past failings. The benefit of using the press as a method of communication is that it reaches a wide audience very quickly, this meant that the public was well informed of the steps that were being taken by J&J to ensure that the problem was solved and that future instances would not occur. The implicit risk that news outlets can interpret the actions of J&J however they wanted, and therefore they could have severely skewed public perception against the company had they chosen to do so. The risk is huge when considering how sensationalism could have motivated many newspapers to over state the problem. This did not occur however, because of the strong relations that J&J had with the media itself. Another communication tool was communication through press conferences; this was moderately effective because it allowed the company to speak directly to the consumer base. However, in general this policy has a limited scope because consumers will not trust the primary source most of the time. They effectively used this strategy because it allowed the company to show that they personally understand the concern of consumers and are working hard to solve the problem. They also used this outlet to provide retribution in terms of free Tylenol to compensate consumers. This dramatically helped their public relations. The final tool that they used effectively is authentication by an unbiased third party. They used the FDA to verify any and all risks implicit in their actions and thus resolved conflicts that might have substantially hurt their case. As a result, consumers trusted J&J because they had the official backing of the government agency. This could have backfired, however if the processes that they used had failed then this entire episode could have taken a turn for the worse.