The US President Called Your Product Dangerous. What Do You Do Now?

Tylenol, the brand under which the consumer health company Kenvue sells the pain and fever reducing drug acetaminophen, finds itself in a tough position this week. On Monday, President Donald Trump claimed the drug is potentially linked to autism when taken during pregnancy.

The company must now decide how to respond to an excruciating communication crisis. For more insight into Tylenol’s options as a brand and lessons that could apply to other organizations in crisis, The Darden Report caught up with Darden lecturer Steve Soltis.

Soltis is an expert in strategic communication, having led executive communication at The Coca Cola Company for more than 10 years and worked with some of the world’s most iconic brands through Arvo Advisory, a strategic communication firm he co-founded.

Tylenol as a brand is in an unusual situation – the President has called its product dangerous. From a crisis communication perspective, what are their options?

In terms of options, they really have two. They can choose to engage and push back, or they can keep their powder dry and limit their engagement here. I don’t believe the second option is viable or smart. They’ll want to get out ahead of this.

In terms of messaging strategy, I am a big fan of what I call the 4T framework of crisis response – timeliness, transparency, trust and tenacity. The team at Kenvue (Tylenol’s parent company) has to respond quickly and as transparently as possible.  You build trust by almost over-communicating and re-iterating the safety of your product and the science behind it. You don’t hide under a rock and hope the issue fades with the next news cycle. You have to be tenacious in your convictions and show that your values, history, product quality standards and R&D efficacy are all on your side.

What are common pitfalls that corporations should avoid when responding to high-profile criticism?

Companies can be defensive when attacked like this, so cool heads need to prevail. You don’t want to get into a tit-for-tat with the President of the United States, regardless of who he or she is or what party they represent. Keep a respectful tone but also be emphatic in your convictions and track record. In the case of Tylenol, they have a long-standing track record of providing safe pain relief to billions of people on billions of occasions. They need to lean into that and the efficacy of their product.

 Will this event shape their future communication strategies, and if so, how?

Fortunately, Tylenol has a track record of gold standard crisis response and a consumer base that is loyal. That said, in future communication efforts they’ll want to focus on educating and re-educating younger consumers who may not know their history or have not grown up with their brand. Brand-building and corporate communication are endless pursuits of engaging, informing, inspiring and building trust.  And, by the way, they’ll also need to communicate aggressively with their own employees. That’s as critical as communicating to customers.

A corporation might think it is on solid scientific footing, but is that enough when it comes to communicating with the public?

I don’t believe that a science argument alone is going to win the day for Tylenol or for most consumer-facing brands. We went down this path for a while when I was at Coca-Cola. We got into debates about the safety of artificial ingredients with medical professionals and NGOs.  It wasn’t effective. In these cases, you have to lean more into your mission, purpose and values as an organization and that you wouldn’t market anything to your customers that you wouldn’t put into your body yourself.