Showing posts with label McNeil Consumer Products. Show all posts
Showing posts with label McNeil Consumer Products. Show all posts

Friday, June 10

Failing At Mitigation: Johnson & Johnson

Johnson & JohnsonJohnson & Johnson is embroiled in what may be the crisis communication dilemma of the year. You would never know it from their Website. Instead, you'll see a huge section that details how much they care about people.

At the same time, Johnson & Johnson has made a dramatic shift in its communication strategy since the days it delivered a best practice in crisis management for Tylenol in 1982. Instead of being at the forefront of product safety, it is patently less aggressive about product safety related to its other assets.

Specifically, although Johnson & Johnson lends its legal team to assist the court cases being lobbied at Motrin, its once stellar reputation for communication doesn't seem to cover McNeil Consumer Healthcare, which markets the Motrin brand. The Motrin brand is in a communication firestorm. Its Fort Washington plant was suspended in connection with the recall of infants’ and children’s liquid over-the-counter (OTC) products manufactured there. There are other problems with the Motrin brand.

Can a company wear a black and white hat in medicine?

Even more current, Johnson & Johnson is reveling in praise for new labeling on acetaminophen products while simultaneously poised to fight a settlement and labeling related to another tragic story mentioned last week.

SJSThe company's argument seems to be that the Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (SJS/Tens) experienced by several children in the last few years after taking Motrin doesn't warrant warnings let alone responsibility. They contend it is too isolated. Ironically, it also flies in the face of their 1982 best practice in crisis management.

Back then, Johnson & Johnson revised medication safety because of an isolated incident that affected nine people in Chicago. The company didn't even have any responsibility for that atrocity and it stepped up. But now, when it seems to be responsible, it is willing to invest considerable funds to fight.

Likewise, in the unrelated phantom recall of Motrin products two years ago, McNeil Consumer Healthcare apparently tried to cover up the recall by repurchasing product but not calling for a recall. The result could have led to dangerous products being left out in the marketplace. Johnson & Johnson is fighting that lawsuit too.

Crisis management in the world of multi-brands.

Johnson & Johnson is hardly alone in creating massive companies with multiple brands that most consumers miss on the surface. The question crisis management teams need to start asking themselves is, despite the various degrees of separation, can a corporate parent really afford to play two sides against the middle anymore?

Isn't this the same argument that BP attempted to make during the Gulf Coast oil spill with the incessant blame game? That the lead company was somehow exempt from responsibility if the contractors under its watch were about to make a historic environmental catastrophe.

Like it or not, consumers are connecting the dots with more and more frequency. Companies are held accountable for employee actions. Companies are held accountable for contractor actions. So doesn't it stand to reason that subsidiaries are also accountable?

Ergo, don't consumers deserve to hear better words from attorneys representing a Johnson & Johnson company that “McNeil complied with every federal regulation and that’s what the proof is.”

Mitigation is the single most important aspect of crisis communication.

Under normal circumstances, maybe not. But given Johnson & Johnson has invested billions of shareholder dollars to appear like it is the absolute leader in pharmaceutical customer safety, Johnson & Johnson is risking one of its greatest assets, a brand name that managed to escape increased scrutiny after the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics two years ago.

disaster planningIn considering the four basic tenets of disaster planning, Johnson & Johnson is continuing to fall short in the area where it was always the strongest. Mitigation focuses on long-term measures to reduce or eliminate risk. It considers more than whether a company "can" win a case. It considers what is lost when a company does win a case.

In this situation, when you add up the court cases, future court cases, immediate public relations damage, and long-term brand damage versus a few settlements, relabeling costs (for a product not even on the market right now), and a physician education campaign, it seems to me Johnson & Johnson is reacting instead of taking the kind of proactive safety measures it used to be known for at great cost. Much more than $10 million. Much more than $1 billion. Much more than $10 billion.

The inherent weakness in the decisions being made at Johnson & Johnson regarding Motrin may even reinforce why a toothless public relations division is not necessarily the best division to handle crisis management. They all too often focus on minimizing publicity damage instead of considering the big picture of brand position. Likewise, lawyers aren't always the best crisis management leaders either. Some of them are too busy framing up crisis management cases in terms of whether it is winnable or not.

To make it work, companies need balanced crisis management teams that can objectivity assess the problems before them. And, if public relations is placed in charge of more than a crisis communication team, then they need to be (at least) empowered and given equal consideration as the legal team. Of course, this also assumes the PR team has enough crisis training. Most of them do not.

At Johnson & Johnson, the growing crisis ought be to handled much like an employee incident. Johnson & Johnson needs to scrub McNeil Consumer Healthcare of executives who allow the worst to happen. And, if they cannot manage themselves as a division, the company might consider folding the Motrin brand into its Johnson & Johnson brand. Of course, all this assumes Johnson & Johnson wants to maintain its reputation as a leader in consumer safety, an asset it once spent billions to create.

One wonders what Robert Wood Johnson might think. He was the former chairman (1932-1963) who crafted the company's credo before anybody ever heard the terms corporate social responsibility and a moral compass. What happened?

Friday, June 3

Failing As The Fifth Estate: Public Relations

Two people sent me keen observations yesterday: one in a comment, another in an email. The observations are worth sharing. Maybe it will even wake up a few public relations and social media professionals who claim to cover their industry. More and more of them have all but fallen asleep at the wheel.

Motrin is currently embroiled in one of its most pressing public relations challenges and blowing it badly. And yet, nobody in the public relations or social media spheres seem to be covering it. Instead, public relations and social media pros are too busy writing about love me tools, mea culpas about failed panels, and (unbelievably) the 2008 Motrin ad campaign.

Perhaps worse, all the overwriting about the 2008 snarky ad campaign overshadows the current crisis on search engines (unless you are specific).

A Brief About Motrin's New Crisis Communication Battle.

If the snarky ad campaign didn't convince some people that Motrin can be insensitive to consumers, then perhaps the pair of new crisis communication scenarios will make them think twice. The first revolves around 3-year-old Brianna Maya, who was given Motrin in 2000.

ABC reports a "fine rash on her body and mild redness around her eyes morphed into something insidious." The reaction to the medicine, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (SJS/Tens), is rare but extremely painful and potentially fatal.

For Maya, it burned and blistered her body inside and out, blinded her in one eye, required her to be sent to a burn unit, and left her reproductive organs destroyed. She also suffered partial brain damage during the acute phase of the reaction.

SJSAccording to the new ruling, the SJS/Tens reaction was triggered by Children's Motrin, which is marketed by McNeil Consumer Products, a division of Johnson & Johnson. A jury recently ordered the drug manufacturer to pay $10 million for her injuries after they determined that McNeil Consumer Products, a division of Johnson & Johnson, was negligent in warning consumers about such a risk. Children's Motrin is currently unavailable on the Motrin website.

Its unavailability comes with the second crisis communication under covered by public relations and social media. It relates to a phantom recall conducted by the company in 2009. The most hideous example of all communication was included in the State of Oregon's complaint. Contractors were advised of the following by the company:

“Do not communicate to store personnel any information about this product. Just purchase all available product. If you are questioned by store personnel, simply advise that you have been asked to perform an audit.”

McNeil Consumer Products and Johnson & Johnson are defending themselves against the lawsuits.

According to The Consumerist, Johnson & Johnson maintains that the labeling was adequate and the condition is "extremely rare" in the Maya case. And other than initially disagreeing with the verdict, most media outlets report Johnson & Johnson is not responding to requests for comment.

As a crisis communication case study, this isn't a quick fix nor can it be cured with the five steps to crisis communication. I started outlining it earlier this week for next, but opted to provide some backgrounder notes after receiving two separate inquiries about PR taking a pass on this one. This fact also makes me amend my review of Welcome To The Fifth Estate from yesterday. It seems more people need to read the book than I initially said.

Rethinking The Fifth Estate With Shrink Wrap.

As mentioned, one of the primary components of Geoff Livingston's book is that communicators must become participants in a larger world to deliver effective communication. And while he doesn't necessarily say it verbatim, therein lies an interesting point for professionals to ponder...

As communicators who claim to be active participants looking out for the greater public, isn't there an unwritten obligation to cover the uncomfortable along with the slapstick sideshows? Or is something else causing PR to be silent about Motrin?

Is it that professional communicators have taken the advice of Shel Holtz to not be a PR ambulance chaser to heart? Is it that most public relations professionals aren't impressed with the numbers this story may or not draw compared to "three steps to develop a social strategy" or some such nonsense? Is it that public relations has moved so far up the 'expert' perception ladder that it has turned in its fluffy bubble for shrink wrap, tightening the plastic until nobody can see anything beyond their own antics?

After all, the two stories mentioned above, combined with the recent discovery that Johnson & Johnson knew its antibiotic Levaquin increased the risk of tendon damage and equally relevant Baby Shampoo debacle, could make Johnson & Johnson the public relations story of the year. And yet, even self-proclained communication leaders at Ragan are more interested in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food plate.

It's a curious thing, this dramatic shift in content. Over the last year, a field that used to pile on crisis events ad nauseum is now too busy for them. Who knows? It may be that for all the empowerment that came with becoming The Fifth Estate so did the risk of becoming too important to be bothered with the rest of the world.

Johnson & Johnson case study ahead, sometime next week. Of course, I'm sure it won't be more fun than a balloon popping post.
 

Blog Archive

by Richard R Becker Copyright and Trademark, Copywrite, Ink. © 2021; Theme designed by Bie Blogger Template