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...
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.
IF this crisis had occurred today, J&J would have had a much better vehicle to directly communicate with the consumer by providing up-to-date information through their web portal. However, this strategy could also have hurt them because then even more consumers would have been attempting to analyze and dissect the issue thus causing misinformation to increase the amount of panic that would already be occurring. If this event occurred today however, I believe that the effects would be minimal upon J&J because of their reputation for integrity that the entire world responds to. Therefore if a crisis occurred individuals would believe in the integrity of this company to solve the problem immediately.
