0:02

It's

0:04

September 29th, 1982. An

0:08

ordinary Wednesday morning in a family-friendly

0:10

Chicago suburb.

0:13

A 12-year-old girl named Mary Kellerman wakes

0:15

up with a common problem. She has

0:17

a cold.

0:18

She didn't feel well

0:20

and she had a headache. She stayed home from school

0:24

and she retrieved some extra strength

0:26

Tylenol from the medicine cabinet.

0:29

Mary's mom bought Tylenol the

0:31

day before. Almost immediately,

0:34

Mary started coughing and she

0:36

fell to the floor.

0:38

Downstairs, Mary's dad

0:40

hears the crash. When he finds

0:42

her on the floor, Mary's eyes are dilated.

0:46

Her breathing is shallow and labored, as

0:48

though she's suffocating.

0:50

They got her to a hospital. She

0:53

got progressively sicker and

0:55

sicker and was pronounced

0:57

dead a short time later.

1:01

Mary Kellerman's death marked

1:03

the start of a nationwide crisis. Because

1:06

her death was just the beginning of what's

1:08

come to be known as the Tylenol murders.

1:16

I'm Shaleen Gupta, and this is Trustonomy,

1:19

an original podcast from OneTrust. This

1:22

whole season, we've been exploring the ways companies

1:24

lose the trust of the public and the devastating

1:27

consequences that follow. But

1:29

now, for our season finale, we're

1:32

telling a different kind of story. This

1:35

is a story about how a crisis helped a

1:37

company rebuild trust by

1:39

proving that they had their customers back.

1:46

It's important if you're building trust

1:48

in a company that you don't stagnate at

1:50

just meeting people's expectations. It's

1:52

actually going to be around exceeding them.

1:54

That's Andrew Clearwater. He's going

1:57

to tell us how Johnson & Johnson, the makers

1:59

of Tylenol, helped rebuild trust

2:01

in one of the nation's biggest brands. But

2:04

first, we need to hear from veteran

2:06

journalist Phil Rogers. I

2:11

don't remember a time when the public was

2:13

more frightened than during the Tom

2:15

and All Murders in Chicago. Last

2:18

year, Phil retired after 31 years

2:21

reporting for NBC 5 News.

2:23

But in the fall of 1982, Phil was just

2:26

starting his career working at WBBM

2:29

Radio, a local Chicago station

2:31

when the murders hit the news.

2:34

At first, nobody knew why

2:35

Mary Kellerman had died. At this

2:37

point, her death wasn't tied to the Tylenol she

2:39

took that fall morning. And

2:41

it's the mystery at the core of the story that

2:43

made the fear spread so quickly. There

2:47

is no minimizing how scared everybody

2:49

was. It was absolutely a terrifying

2:52

time. That level of horror

2:54

and outrage going on for weeks

2:57

and weeks and a lot of people

2:59

wondering if another shoe was still going to drop. That

3:02

worry was, sadly, completely justified.

3:05

In fact, even as Mary's family was trying

3:07

to process her sudden death, tragedy

3:09

was stalking other folks in the Chicago

3:11

area. A postal

3:14

worker by the name of Adam Janis,

3:16

who was 27 years old, is getting up and starting

3:18

his day. He doesn't feel very

3:20

well. He calls in sick.

3:23

He goes to the grocery store and while he's there,

3:25

he picks up a bottle of extra strength Tylenol.

3:28

Then he heads home and takes a couple capsules

3:30

from the bottle.

3:32

And comes out of the bathroom clutching his chest

3:35

and obviously is in real distress.

3:38

His wife is alarmed by this and

3:41

they call 911 and get an ambulance

3:44

there to try to give him some help. He goes to the

3:46

hospital and he dies a short time

3:48

later. have

4:00

a seemingly healthy young man who has

4:02

suddenly died. Later

4:05

that day, recovering from the shock of its

4:07

death, Adam's brother Stanley

4:09

and the rest of the Janus family leave

4:12

the hospital and go back to Adam's house

4:14

to make funeral arrangements. Stanley

4:17

was himself not feeling well and was

4:20

overcome with grief. He asked if they

4:22

had any pain medication, was told,

4:24

yeah, it's in the bathroom medicine cabinet. There should

4:26

be some Tylenol in there. He went in and retrieved

4:28

the bottle and came out with it. And his

4:31

wife, Teresa, said, you know what? Why

4:33

don't you let me have two of those two? I'm not feeling

4:35

so well either. They both ingested

4:37

the capsules. Almost immediately,

4:40

they fell to the floor, suffering the

4:43

exact same kind of symptoms

4:46

as Adam had been displaying. They are quickly

4:48

taken to the same hospital where

4:50

they would eventually be pronounced dead as well. Three

4:54

members of the same family all collapsed

4:57

in the same house. All on the same

4:59

day, they were all taken to the same hospital

5:02

by the same paramedics. First

5:04

responders and medical staff were baffled.

5:08

But that would soon change with a random bit of

5:10

luck.

5:11

There were two different completely unrelated

5:13

sets of paramedics and firefighters from

5:16

different communities who happened to know

5:18

each other.

5:19

One set knew about young Mary's death, and

5:21

the other set knew about the Janus family.

5:24

They happened to talk to each other and

5:27

mention, boy, I had this crazy

5:29

run in my department. These people were poisoned.

5:32

And the other party's saying, you know

5:34

what? We had the very same thing happen

5:36

here and start to put

5:38

two and two together. Four people

5:41

in the Chicago area had now died in the

5:43

same way all on the same day. Then,

5:46

within hours, three more people perished.

5:49

Extra-strength Tylenol remained

5:51

the common link in every case. Armed

5:54

with this information, the deputy medical

5:57

examiner at the Cook County Office gave

5:59

the...

7:59

How did Tylenol become tainted in the first

8:02

place? Was it perhaps the manufacturer's

8:04

fault? Cyanide, after all,

8:06

was used to test lead levels in the factories

8:08

where Tylenol was made. The

8:11

theory was soon dismissed. The cyanide

8:13

and the poison capsules had a different

8:15

chemical makeup, and even more troubling,

8:18

the poison capsules were coming from more

8:20

than one factory. This

8:24

led investigators to a frightening conclusion.

8:27

That was the point where they knew they had

8:29

somebody out there that was tampering with the capsules,

8:32

some kind of madman that is intentionally

8:35

poisoning the Tylenol and

8:37

putting them in the stores. Then,

8:39

on October 1st, just two days after

8:42

people started dying...

8:43

A man mails an extortion

8:46

letter. It was written anonymously to

8:48

Johnson & Johnson, demanding

8:50

a million dollars be deposited

8:52

in a Chicago bank, in his

8:55

words, if you want to stop the killing.

8:57

Using the bank account number, authorities tracked

9:00

the threat back to a man named James Lewis.

9:03

And while he didn't admit to the crime...

9:06

He was given paper and writing materials,

9:08

and he drew a picture of

9:10

how he thought the killer

9:13

probably put the Tylenol into

9:15

the capsules. A lot of the investigators

9:17

thought that indicated

9:19

more than just a little creativity

9:22

on Mr. Lewis's part, that it showed

9:24

that he was possibly even using his

9:26

own recollection. Here's

9:29

what was clear. An enormous number

9:31

of lives were now at risk. They

9:33

could be looking at a horrifying case of mass

9:35

murder. The scale of the tragedy

9:38

was expanding by the hour.

9:40

Johnson & Johnson was understandably subject

9:42

to a lot of serious

9:43

scrutiny at this point.

9:45

All eyes were on them. They had

9:47

to react. Johnson & Johnson

9:50

mounted a big blitz of

9:52

information. They go on

9:54

television, tell the public, don't buy

9:57

our product. They also, for

9:59

a while,

9:59

while killed all their advertising completely.

10:02

They offered a reward for information

10:04

that might lead to the killer. They

10:07

worked incredibly closely with

10:09

law enforcement and with the Food

10:11

and Drug Administration, and they start

10:13

pulling it off the shelves by the tens

10:15

of millions of bottles, which

10:17

they admit are now going to be tested

10:20

for the potential presence of cyanide.

10:23

That nationwide recall took place on

10:25

October 5th, less than a week into

10:27

the crisis. It was the first mass

10:30

recall in American history. This

10:32

was an extraordinary and full-fledged

10:35

reaction. In 1982, the

10:37

term crisis management wasn't even

10:39

a thing, so Johnson & Johnson

10:42

had to invent it on the fly.

10:44

Johnson & Johnson ends up recalling 31

10:48

million bottles of extra-strength Tylenol

10:51

worth an estimated $100 million. That's

10:54

in 1982 dollars, and

10:57

they were taking quite a hit on this because at that

10:59

point, Tylenol was the number

11:01

one over-the-counter pain medication.

11:04

Suddenly, everyone's afraid of this

11:07

product.

11:08

The change to Johnson & Johnson's bottom

11:11

line was enormous and immediate. In

11:13

just a few weeks, Tylenol's

11:16

market share plummeted from 35% to 8%.

11:20

It doesn't come much worse than that

11:23

for an American business to have to

11:25

go to the public and say, don't use

11:27

our product. It might kill you. If

11:30

you had asked any of us

11:32

in the news business or anybody in the public

11:34

at that point in the days after the

11:37

murders began to unfold, we would

11:39

have told you that there was one fact that

11:41

was indisputable, and that that was Tylenol

11:43

was dead as a product.

11:45

When a company is faced with such a terrible crisis,

11:48

a common reaction is to retreat and

11:50

make themselves invisible. But Johnson &

11:52

Johnson did the opposite. They

11:54

decided to reach out.

11:57

They set up toll-free numbers for

11:59

the public.

11:59

for the news media to call

12:02

with updates on information

12:05

from the company itself. The chairman

12:07

of the company was not shy. He

12:09

went on big shows. He was on 60 Minutes.

12:12

He was on Donny Hugh. He appeared

12:14

in the television commercials himself,

12:18

going on as the face of the company to

12:20

talk about why people

12:22

shouldn't take the product and let me

12:24

show you what we're doing to safeguard the public.

12:26

Of

12:30

course, any solution was never just

12:32

going to be about optics. They needed

12:34

a concrete change. By November,

12:37

Johnson & Johnson announced an innovation

12:40

that they'd been experimenting with before

12:42

the murders.

12:44

They go back on television and they

12:47

announce, for the very first time in history,

12:49

tamper-proof packaging. And they demonstrate

12:51

in the commercial, I remember this really,

12:54

really well, they show the box

12:56

that the end flap is glued shut, that

12:59

when you open the box, you're going to take out a bottle

13:01

that has a safety seal around the neck of the

13:03

bottle, a plastic shrink-wrapped

13:06

seal. And then you're going

13:08

to open the bottle and it has a foil

13:10

cap across the top of the bottle. Tamper-proof

13:13

packaging was exactly the innovation

13:15

that an anxious public wanted, even

13:18

if they didn't know it yet. In 1983,

13:21

Congress passed a bill making it a federal

13:23

crime to tamper with medications. It

13:25

was called the Tylenol Bill. I

13:28

remember that a disaster official who

13:30

was responsible for federal legislation

13:32

told me once that all safety

13:35

regulations are written in blood. And

13:37

what she meant by that is that any

13:40

good law that deals with the safety

13:42

of the public probably stemmed from

13:44

a tragedy. The daily life

13:47

of American consumers was changed forever.

13:50

A new layer of protection and of trust

13:52

was now baked into the consumer experience.

13:56

So did it work out for Johnson & Johnson? Did

13:58

they regain the trust of the public?

13:59

the public.

14:01

In just a year after the murders, Tylenol

14:04

regained its entire market share and

14:06

was once again the top pain reliever

14:08

in the country. Johnson & Johnson

14:11

did the best job I can remember

14:13

of trying to take control

14:16

of a tragic situation that was

14:18

affecting their company and they managed

14:20

to turn it around. And proof of that

14:23

is possibly sitting in your home right

14:25

now.

14:28

My experience with it is that it's something

14:30

you definitely have in your cupboard and

14:32

Tylenol is not something to worry

14:35

about.

14:35

Like most people,

14:36

Andrew Clearwater, the chief trust architect

14:39

at One Trust, has always thought of Tylenol

14:41

as a brand that everybody can trust.

14:44

But as we've just heard, there was a brief

14:46

time when trust in Tylenol was shaken

14:49

to its core.

14:50

The tragedy here is you would

14:52

trust that if you go to a

14:54

store that is selling

14:57

medication to make you healthier, it's

14:59

such an unexpected thing. And there

15:01

really was no way that either

15:04

the company or the family could have known

15:06

the circumstances that were going to unfold.

15:09

Andrew's job is about discovering

15:12

new ways to secure our customer trust

15:14

in today's digital world. That

15:17

title, Trust Architect, carries

15:19

a lot of weight.

15:21

I'm one of very few, I believe. I

15:23

might really be the second if I can

15:25

believe what's on LinkedIn. But

15:27

it's a unique job for sure. There's

15:29

a combination of research work where we're

15:31

looking at privacy and security ethics

15:33

and ESG. And there's a kind

15:36

of facilitating the development that goes

15:38

with building a program that works for a

15:40

lot of companies. The issues

15:42

that companies deal with today may look radically

15:45

different from the pre-cloud offline

15:47

world of the 1980s. But

15:50

Andrew says the way

15:51

Johnson & Johnson dealt with their crisis

15:53

still has a lot to teach us.

15:56

What's interesting about this story is that we want

15:58

to be able to do what we can to make the world a better place.

17:47

the

18:00

implications, I guess, to the long-term

18:02

outcome of the company. And from that

18:05

point of view, you're not going to get the same result

18:07

as this story.

18:09

Johnson & Johnson's customer-first approach

18:11

wasn't just lip service. They let

18:13

that value dictate their response. In

18:16

other words, they weren't inventing some new

18:18

moral compass on the fly. Their

18:21

plan emerged from values they already

18:23

had.

18:24

So if your values were created by

18:26

your marketing department, then

18:28

you won't see them carried out later

18:31

on if they weren't actually internalized, taught,

18:33

and part of how the company behaves. One

18:36

of the things that you can see here with

18:38

Tylenol is that they

18:40

live their values. And I think it's in

18:43

times of crisis that values

18:46

are tested.

18:49

It shouldn't surprise anyone that putting people

18:51

first also happens to be good for a brand

18:54

in the long run. People respect

18:56

companies like that. And companies

18:58

like that earn their trust.

19:00

Tylenol becomes this

19:03

value-filled underdog almost,

19:06

even though they're a giant corporation, right?

19:08

Like, they are trying to figure something out. I

19:11

think it really brought the public along with them.

19:13

Tylenol ends up looking like

19:16

a victim of something that happened to them.

19:21

Johnson & Johnson did not simply take

19:23

action. They also communicated

19:25

that action to the public. Just

19:28

weeks after the Tylenol murders, their

19:30

chairman went on 60 Minutes and The Donahue

19:33

Show. The Tylenol murders were dominating

19:35

the American imagination, so Johnson &

19:38

Johnson made sure their voice was at the forefront

19:40

of the national conversation. Communicating

19:43

a strategy is what gives

19:45

people confidence in your actions. If

19:47

you're doing it in the vacuum and people

19:50

are scared, they will

19:51

not have confidence. And what's interesting

19:54

about Johnson & Johnson is not only

19:56

were they able to communicate it, they

19:58

did it with such a media.

20:01

All that communication wasn't about claiming

20:03

innocence either. Instead, they

20:05

spent that airtime explaining what they were

20:08

doing to fix the situation. Again,

20:10

Johnson & Johnson was putting the needs of their customer

20:13

first. In doing so, they

20:16

received a massive lift themselves.

20:18

It would have been easy for Tylenol

20:21

to spend a lot of their communications

20:23

time on

20:25

how this was not them. But by

20:27

really bringing it back to, look,

20:30

this is what we're going to do about it. It

20:32

puts you in the space of showing

20:36

basically capability and value

20:38

when normally you could be focusing

20:41

on the crisis itself. And

20:43

so by making

20:45

it clear through your communications, the

20:48

story about what Johnson & Johnson was doing

20:50

became the story.

20:54

It can feel like a leap of faith to really let

20:57

a customer first, open and transparent

20:59

culture guide your company. But

21:01

it's more pragmatic than it may seem. The

21:06

extraordinary actions Johnson & Johnson

21:09

took, for example, may seem altruistic.

21:12

But here's the thing. It was also a

21:14

kind of enlightened self-interest.

21:17

A company that earned the public's

21:18

trust has earned the public's

21:21

business.

21:22

Every time a shopper looked at a bottle of Tylenol,

21:25

the visual of that new tamper-proof packaging

21:28

reminded them that this was a company

21:30

they could trust.

21:32

And these protections became

21:34

industry standard, and it became a

21:36

way to visually see what was different

21:39

between before the crisis and after

21:41

the crisis. And I think that matters a lot.

21:44

It's putting it back in this new form that

21:46

really changes the experience. And

21:49

I think customers need to be

21:51

able to perceive the brand

21:54

and what's changed here.

21:59

Ciel, Tylenol was suddenly a

22:02

brand that stood out as safe instead

22:04

of dangerous. They reversed

22:05

the narrative about their product and

22:08

the ultimate result is that they established a

22:10

competitive advantage over their competition.

22:12

You're choosing a technology that enhances

22:15

trust. You might actually bring people towards

22:17

your brand in a way that causes the rest

22:19

of the industry to have to catch up. And

22:22

if they try to catch up, they're going to

22:24

incur costs in the rush to bring that

22:26

technology to market, or they

22:28

might not even get the benefit of trust because

22:31

a brand that acted quickly will be

22:33

able to show, Hey, we acted because

22:35

we were acting in your best interests. The others,

22:37

they don't get that halo effect.

22:40

In fact, Tylenol came out of the crisis

22:43

looking like a leader. And the result we

22:45

heard earlier that their market share bounced back

22:48

to its pre-crisis level, and

22:50

nobody thought that was possible.

22:52

That is remarkable, both

22:54

in how quickly it dropped and how quickly

22:57

it returned. But also in

22:59

an odd way, all of this talk about

23:02

Tylenol, once it became

23:04

clear that they were taking the right actions,

23:07

it sort of built

23:10

a recognition among households that probably

23:13

wasn't even there prior to it. And

23:15

then it's sort of in the collective

23:17

consciousness after that. I

23:20

can't think of any company that has made

23:22

such a quick recovery like that. And boy,

23:24

could it have gone another way.

23:27

Andrew envisions a future where nobody

23:29

has to go that other way. He

23:31

believes every company

23:32

can benefit from treating their customers'

23:34

trust like a core part of their business.

23:37

The goal is to exceed people's expectations,

23:40

and an entire metric of trust can

23:42

be established to see how you're doing. The

23:45

customer's trust in a company becomes

23:47

a real measurable thing of

23:49

value.

23:50

Let's say we have privacy,

23:53

ethics, security, and ESG sort of building

23:55

the core of our trust program. Talking

23:58

about trust measurement and trust school.

23:59

isn't it important to

24:02

know what other people think of what you do, right? In

24:04

the end, I think you want a combination

24:07

internally of values

24:09

that show what you're doing for the business,

24:12

but you've got to bring into scope feedback

24:15

from the key audiences about their experience.

24:18

And I think that might be a

24:21

bit of a seed that grows into trust

24:23

scoring overall.

24:25

Listening is fundamental to trust. It's

24:28

where customer-first values and effective

24:30

communication really begin. You

24:32

need to listen to the public's concerns and hopes,

24:35

tell them what you're going to do to help, and

24:37

then do it.

24:38

But

24:39

when it comes down

24:41

to whether those actions end

24:43

up being trusted or not, you

24:46

don't really find that in the playbook, right? That's

24:49

still something that has to happen in the culture.

24:55

So, whatever happened to James Lewis,

24:58

the star suspect in the Tylenol murders,

25:02

he was eventually charged with extortion for

25:04

the letter he sent to Johnson & Johnson and

25:06

sentenced to 12 years in prison. But

25:09

despite their suspicions, investigators

25:12

were never able to pin him with the murders.

25:15

The case was reopened several times over

25:17

the years, but sadly, there

25:19

was never a proper ending to this tragedy.

25:24

When Lewis died in the summer of 2023, there

25:26

was still no resolution

25:27

in this case. To

25:30

this day, the Tylenol murders in Chicago

25:32

remain unsolved.

25:35

And yet, for all that uncertainty and

25:37

chaos, real and positive

25:38

changes were made.

25:40

In 1989, new FDA

25:43

guidelines required all over-the-counter

25:45

drugs to be sold in tamper-proof packaging.

25:49

Tylenol's new packaging became the vanguard,

25:51

leading the way to a whole new landscape

25:53

for American consumer goods.

25:59

a temperproof seal. When

26:02

you buy a bottle of orange

26:05

juice and you unscrew the top

26:07

of it, and you have that really hard

26:09

to peel off foil seal

26:12

across the neck of the bottle, all

26:14

of that stems from the Tylenol

26:17

murders in Chicago, and it

26:19

was all invented by Johnson &

26:21

Johnson. This

26:26

season, stories from the past have inspired

26:29

new insights about trust and the role

26:31

it plays with successful businesses. We

26:34

saw a number of tragedies along the way, but

26:37

a few powerful tools always

26:39

made the difference when disaster struck. Pools

26:43

that often go ignored, like privacy

26:45

and informed consent, third-party

26:47

risk management, respect for whistleblowers,

26:50

and proper data management. Pools

26:53

like these are the fundamentals

26:55

of trust.

26:57

A lot can go wrong

26:57

out there, but trust isn't about some

27:00

perfect world where nothing ever goes wrong.

27:03

It's about knowing that someone's done right

27:05

right.

27:06

It's about knowing every effort has been made

27:08

to keep you safe.

27:11

And I've learned this much for sure. In

27:13

the world of business, trust

27:15

is something we have to earn every day.

27:28

So that's a wrap for season one of Trustonomy.

27:31

I hope you've loved listening to the show as much

27:33

as I've enjoyed hosting it. The

27:35

team behind Trustonomy is story producer

27:38

and showrunner Goldub Swanson, executive

27:40

producer Tori Allen, writer

27:43

Michael Harris, and sound designers Mark

27:45

Angley, Christian Proem,

27:46

and Robin Edger.

27:49

From one host, we have Katie Wharton and John

27:51

Mill. With graphic design by Isabella

27:53

Dubose, I'm Shaleen

27:55

Gupta, and this is Trustonomy, an original

27:57

podcast

27:58

from Huawei.

27:59

Thanks for listening.