Just about a week ago, I caught up by phone with an old friend who, unlike me, was a public relations major in college.
Amid talk of family, sports and work, he mentioned that, after more than 30 years in a successful career in higher education, he still remembers one thing from his undergrad class in crisis communications: Tylenol.
Even after more than 40 years, the Tylenol crisis case study from 1982 endures as a best practice example. Not only did it save a health brand, we also don’t get many examples in this line of work that are memorable and celebrated. When we do our jobs correctly, crises become boring and unmemorable and maybe don’t even become public in the first place.
Now, here in 2025, Tylenol is facing another crisis, this time because no less than the President of the United States and his Secretary of Health and Human Services are blaming the brand for causing autism. Here’s how the Associated Press reported it:
“President Donald Trump on Monday used the platform of the presidency to promote unproven and in some cases discredited ties between Tylenol, vaccines and autism as his administration announced a wide-ranging effort to study the causes of the complex brain disorder.
‘Don’t take Tylenol,’ Trump instructed pregnant women around a dozen times during the unwieldy White House news conference, also urging mothers not to give their infants the drug, known by the generic name acetaminophen in the U.S. or paracetamol in most other countries. He also fueled long-debunked claims that ingredients in vaccines or timing shots close together could contribute to rising rates of autism in the U.S., without providing any medical evidence.”
All eyes are now on Kenvue, a company few have heard of before today, which owns the Tylenol brand. That’s because it’s a consumer-health spinoff from the well-known Johnson & Johnson.
What should they do? Communicate. Now.
It’s now time to remember that while sizeable a portion of the country takes its opinion cues on, well, pretty much everything, from this President (We had access to a poll in 2020 from an exceptionally credible pollster, at the peak of the pandemic, that showed most self-identified Republicans trusted Trump on medical information more than the doctors they saw in media coverage), the majority of the country believes other sources to be credible. The company must seize the opportunity to speak with its trusted voice on is own product.
This doesn’t just mean posting statements. As one of the biggest news stories of the week (so far, but it’s early), they could get their executives and scientists, and the third-party experts who believe in what the science actually shows, placed anywhere in the public eye they choose. They have the power of traditional media, social media and podcasts at their disposal. Like in 1982, they can buy advertising as part of a relentless effort to bring their message to the public. They can counter the White House press conference by taking the same approach.
This has the opportunity to be another watershed moment for corporate communications to match up against the power of government propaganda. Whether Kenvue meets this moment may be the subject of conversation, in classrooms, between friends and otherwise, decades from now.