Tylenol Crisis and Deep Water Horizon Crisis discuss the two approaches to informing the public.

 From a Public Relations perspective what are the interventions that helped and the interventions that were not helpful. In both cases what if anything could have been done differently.

Tylenol

What happened in Chicago in 1982 remains an example of how companies should face the unthinkable. Johnson & Johnson woke up in crisis when somebody laced Tylenol capsules with cyanide, killing seven Chicago-area residents. That’s an unthinkable tragedy for a pharmaceutical company.

As the country panicked, Johnson & Johnson pulled 31 million bottles of Tylenol from store shelves. The company used satellite news conferences to reintroduce Tylenol the over-the-counter medicine with a triple-seal tamper-resistant package that soon became an industry standard. Johnson & Johnson also offered customer incentives such as free replacements and discount coupons.

The company saw a quick recovery of its 35 percent market share and in the process fostered an ongoing customer loyalty. Because of its good reputation and its responsible handling of the still-unsolved murders, the company emerged from the crisis with even more consumer respect and confidence.

More than 30 years later, the legacy of Johnson & Johnson is a case study in good crisis communication and solid public relations, a morality tale that shows the value of a corporate conscientiousness that places its customers first and keeps its promise of safety.

Deepwater Horizon

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, in 2010, has been called the worst environmental disaster in North American history. It also was a public relations debacle for British Petroleum.

The events are well known: A deep-sea explosion off the Louisiana coast killed 11 oil-rig workers and led to the release of nearly 200 million gallons of oil that polluted an area of 3,900 square miles.

The out-of-control spill and efforts to cap the well led the news for weeks. The economic impact was severe: $2.5 billion (£1.6 billion, €2 billion) in immediate damages to the fishing industry and $24 billion (£15.3 billion, €18.9 billion) to tourism, with predictions of decades-long effects. BP estimated the cleanup costs would mount to nearly $40 billion (£25 billion, €32 billion), and more than two years after the disaster, BP was still haggling with the federal government and the states of Louisiana and Mississippi over its share of the costs.

BP, once considered the greenest oil company in America, was blamed for the disaster and criticized for how it handled the tragedy. For the early weeks of the spill, its British CEO, Tony Hayward, was the face of BP. He had a reputation in Britain as being a knowledgeable and trusted corporate leader. But the confusion surrounding the facts in the crisis wore on him. Then he was photographed sailing in a yacht race at the height of the crisis, followed by an outburst about “wanting his life back.” Hayward resigned several weeks after the explosion.

How did BP handle its crisis communications? First it tried to blame others: drillers it had hired, owners of the rig and government regulators. This violated one of the tenets of good crisis communication: Accept responsibility for fixing the problem, and don’t lay blame.

Rather quickly, BP’s public relations strategy turned toward the future: how the company would contain the spill and compensate the victims. BP set up a $20 billion (£12.7 billion, €15.8) fund to reimburse victims for their economic loss. It was a good move, though one later threatened by charges that BP mismanaged the fund.

Critics observed that BP lost public confidence by ceding to the media the task of providing public education about deep-water drilling. It let others tell its story. BP eventually created an educational component to its website, but the details were too technical and confusing for most visitors.

A year and a half after the spill, BP engaged in some heavy-duty image repair with advertisements reporting that the gulf ecology had not been as severely damaged as it originally seemed to be and that the fishing industry was then showing signs of economic recovery. BP hired chefs Emeril Lagasse and John Besh to promote gulf seafood, and it gave away fish tacos and seafood jambalaya at Sugar Bowl parties in New Orleans.