When Bad Things Happen to Good Companies: A Crisis Management Primer

What to do next was a daunting question. In the fall of 1982, executives at Johnson & Johnson were confronted with the deaths of seven people, who had swallowed capsules of the company's Tylenol product which had been laced with cyanide. Tylenol was important to Johnson & Johnson. The painkiller accounted for nearly one-fifth of Johnson & Johnson's profits in 1981.

Moreover, Tylenol's thirty-five percent market share represented a longterm marketing success; its active ingredient is a compound any company could produce. Yet, when it was discovered that the tampered products came from two different manufacturing plants, Johnson & Johnson Chairman James Burke decided on a nationwide recall. It was an expensive judgment-resulting in the removal of thirty-one million bottles, with a retail value of over $100 million, from store shelves.