One aspect of pharmacy digital marketing that can sometimes be underappreciated is the importance of brand public relations.
Marketing brands are rarely static and perceptions can change widely depending on particular products, cultural circumstances and events beyond the control of the brand manager themselves, who whilst proactive in approach will often need to react to evolving situations around them.
This can become an incredibly difficult situation when a product is tied to a tragic or horrific event, such was the case with the Chicago Tylenol Murders.
The pain relief brand Tylenol is a popular US brand owned by Johnson & Johnson that was rocked when the deaths of seven people on 29th September 1982 were traced to bottles of Tylenol capsules, and tests found traces of potassium cyanide in the capsules.
This led to mass warnings being issued in the Chicago area to stop using that particular brand of products, and a similar incident in California lead to a nationwide recall of Tylenol at a cost of over £100m.
J&J worked with the Food and Drug Administration, the FBI and the Chicago Police to help with the case, and because of this, it emerged that the bottles that had been found to be tainted were manufactured at two different sites, leading to the belief that the bottles were tampered by someone once they reached Chicago store shelves.
At the time, medicine bottles did have tamper-proof packaging so a bottle could be opened, a poison added and then quickly returned without anyone knowing of the malfeasance.
J&J were open with the public during the entire situation, the recall showed they were willing to do anything to protect them and they set up hotlines to help provide whatever information they had, which alongside television interviews highlighted the empathy of the company.
They exchanged capsules for caplets for free, which were far more difficult to poison, used a triple-sealed tamper-resistant package for the first time in the US medical industry and heavily discounted their products to regain public trust.
The campaign, credited to PR executive Howard Burson, is often taught as an exemplary case of how to manage a crisis situation.