For Johnson & Johnson, the Hits Keep on Coming
For Johnson & Johnson CEO William Weldon, 2010 was, as Queen Elizabeth put it a few years back, an “annus horribilus.” The Company’s various divisions issued a seeming never ending string of recall notices from pain relievers to cold remedies to contact lens solution to antacids. J&J’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare division, makers of Tylenol, Sudafed and Benadryl captured headlines throughout the year with a series of problems at its facilities.
Through a series of public relations fumbles, belated mea culpas and operational gaffes, J&J, a consumer healthcare icon, whose 1980s Tylenol tampering response was widely seen as the crisis communication gold standard, has seen its reputation significantly tarnished and its sales plummet. Generics and store brands from CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid have never had it so good.
This track record garnered for Mr. Weldon a place next to the likes of BP’s Tony Hayward and HP’s Mark Hurd a place on list of the worst CEOs of 2010 by Sydney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth as reported by CNBC.
Unfortunately, it appears that 2011 is starting right where 2010 left off for J&J as the company issued its latest recall of 43 million bottles of Tylenol, Sudafed, Benadryl and Sinutab manufactured at McNeil’s now infamous Fort Washington, PA plant. Using a time-worn public relations ploy, the news of the recall was released on a Friday evening prior to a long holiday weekend. Mr. Weldon, once again spoke of action plans, quality reviews and commitment to consumer safety.
For those of us in crisis communications who know all too well how reputation is tied to a company’s proactive, transparent and thoughtful response, it is sad to see what has become of J&J. The blogosphere is once again full of chatter with reminiscences of J&J’s gloried past, recollections of its expert management or previous crises and calls for executive changes long overdue.
This past weekend also brought news of another medical leave to be taken by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. The issues of Apple’s history of communications or non-communications about Mr. Jobs’ illness and succession planning at the Company are fodder for another blog post. This latest episode and the quick hit to Apple’s stock price shows the close relationship between corporate and executive reputation at Apple and what may happen with the Company’s visionary leader on the sideline. Conversely, for J&J and Mr. Weldon the reputational issue may be a CEO staying too long in a position.
Tags: Apple, BP, CVS, HP, Johnson & Johnson, Rite Aid, Steve Jobs, Tylenol, Walgreens
