Without pinning themselves into a legal corner, Bridgestone/Firestone could have learned a valuable PR lesson from Tylenol. In 1982, Tylenol captured $400 million in annual sales, controlling 37 percent of the market.
Things drastically changed one day in early October of that same year. Several individuals in the Chicago area died as a result of cyanide found in Tylenol capsules.
The grim news spread quickly. People all over the country wondered if the Tylenol in their medicine cabinet had the power to take their life.
But Johnson & Johnson, makers of Tylenol, immediately went into action. First, they did what other companies thought was business suicide. They recalled every single bottle of Tylenol in the country. Bottles on the store shelf. Bottles on your kitchen shelf.
They shut down production and distribution of the medicine. All in an effort to save people's lives. Not their brand name.
Johnson & Johnson publicized the recall with full-page newspaper ads and stories on the news. Consumers could take their bottles to the store and exchange them for Tylenol that wasn't subjected to cyanide tampering.
They had an open policy. They were willing to answer any questions, at the expense of their good name. They didn't know if tampering had happened during manufacturing, shipping, at the store. And at that point, they didn't care.
Within the first 10 days, the company received 1,411 telephone calls. A number which topped 2,500 by the time the crisis was over. Their clipping service found over 120,000 news stories related to the cyanide tampering.
The fact of the matter was that there were millions of possibly affected capsules that needed to be returned. Johnson & Johnson wanted to save lives...not their stock prices. The company even offered a $100,000 reward for the capture of the perpetrator.
From the beginning, Johnson & Johnson worked with federal investigators. Not against them. They were not pressured or forced to act.
In the end, 31 million bottles of Tylenol were recalled. After testing 8 million recalled capsules, it was determined that the bottles had been tampered with on store shelves. Only eight bottles had actually been laced with cyanide, a total of 75 capsules.