Did Tylenol Invoke Design Thinking?

September 29 is not a particularly special day by any means, unless you are a coffee attic, in which case you would know it’s international coffee day. As far as great human endeavours go, there is nothing significant about this particular date in history. However, if you are in PR or a proponent of design thinking you may think differently.

In the early 80’s few organisations (except companies like Braun and Apple) understood the value strategic design/design thinking could provide to an organisation. It would not become widely accepted, and the overused term it has become, until almost 30 years later. 

It was on the 29th of September that public relations took a dramatic step forward and helped reverse a companies mis-fortune by unknowingly using elements we now identify as design thinking. The results from these activities were so exceptional that they set a standard for how companies dealt with dangerous or faulty products into the future.

On this day in 1982 seven deaths were reported as a result of a deliberate poisoning in Chicago. It was discovered that these deaths occurred as a result of tampering with the McNeil Consumer Products (a fully owned subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson) manufactured ‘Extra Strength Tylenol’ headache tablets in which cyanide was purported to have been injected into the packaging. The companies response to this event was not as corporate PR pundits would have expected, in fact, it ran against everything companies thought about handling negative PR events. More importantly it ran against the corporate policy of Johnson and Johnson when it came to handling negative PR. 

Looking back at what transpired you can see that the management team applied what we all label as a design thinking methodology to a rather obvious market problem. This process worked so well it became a case study for what to do in times of crisis. What most people didn’t realise was that everything done was almost a text book application of design thinking. There is no doubt the outcome of the strategies employed was exceptional, the questions is why was it so successful? One clue to the success comes from examining how the executive team applied its strategies. You can see that the CEO and senior management team were 100% invested in the approach they were taking. This aligns closely to the implementation of a cultural change. If there is one thing experience has taught us is that strategies like design thinking have greater chance of success when they are driven from the culture of an organisation. The Tylenol experience reinforces what the design industry already knows and that is that design thinking is more about the culture of an organisation than a process you get from a large consulting firm. 

The importance of cultural change in the process of strategic product design (and innovation) should never be underestimated. 

What the executive team at Mc Neil Consumer Products unknowingly set in motion was a shift in the company culture which was reset by the then Chairman James Burke’s initiative to set aside the J&J way of handling Negative PR and refocusing the organisation to be centred around the customer. This was supported through constant communication with the market and conceptual testing of possible solutions in conjunction with their key customers.

Looking back you realise that what occurred was a choice to ignore the ‘resource dependancies’ (Clayton Christensen - “The Innovator's Dependencies) of the organisation for the sake of the customer. 

It was breathtakingly successful in it’s effect and outcome. Prior to the poisonings Tylenol controlled 37% of the market and immediately after the poisoning its market share dropped to 7%. 5 Months after the disaster Tylenol had recovered most of its market share, even attracting customers who used other brands to start using Tylenol because of the way they handled the issue. Remarkable.

Tylenol controlled 37% of the market and that fell to 7% during the poisonings.

When it come to case studies on design thinking it is often hard to find events where you can clearly demonstrate how important a change in culture is when taking on a this journey. This is one of those cases, where the hidden hero is the process used, coupled and supported, by a cultural change that is adopted through the whole organisation from the Chairman, James Bruce and his senior management team, right through to the design, distribution and warehouse teams. 

If your organisation is struggling to drive strategic product design and dare I say it, innovation, then take note there is genius in the approach McNeil Consumer Products took to address the issue with their number one selling product Tylenol - Extra Strength.

It would be unfair to attribute all the success of these initiatives to a temporary ’cultural change’ within the organisation. There were many other elements of the process that contributed. However, there was no doubt the leadership and resulting cultural change was a prominent, if not the leading contributor. Some of the elements that resemble and reflect a design thinking process that we found were;

1. The company credo dominated::

You can call Credo a mission statement or an expression of company values either way it’s what any good strategic design process uses as its base to work from. You must understand the company values and ensure you operate from them. This is exactly what James Burke did. On the company’s credo written in the mid-1940’s by Robert Wood Johnson, in which he stated that the company‘s responsibilities were to the consumers and medical professionals using its products, employees, the communities where its people work and live, and its stockholders. Therefore, it was essential to maintain the safety of its employees, the public and its communities in order to maintain the company. 

2. The customer at the centre::

The next step James Burke took was to form a senior corporate team that placed the customer at the centre of the issue. This meant ensuring the team consulted customers on almost every decision. It was also mandated that the senior team and product designers understood the perception of their customers, getting a feel for what was happening became critical. In the world of strategic design (design thinking) we call this ‘empathy’. 

As a part of that decision the executive team’s biggest decision was to recall almost 31 million bottles of Tylenol across the US, one of the first times in history this action had ever been taken by a large corporate during a crisis. It was estimated to cost more than $100 Million. This action on its own reinforced confidence in Tylenol and made customers feel valued.

3. Define/discover the real problem::

The most critical step that the executive team took was to get a clear picture of the problem. We often say in business the hardest thing about fixing something that doesn’t work is to find what the ‘real’ problem is. For McNeil Consumer Products the problem was not limited to finding the culprit and stopping them (which I believe they never did). Rather it was understanding that the problem became confidence in the brand ‘Tylenol’. Customers no longer believed that the product was safe and trust began to wayne very very quickly. The company actions and product solution put in place addressed in most part the confidence and trust issues of customers, while also limiting the ability for the instigator of this to repeat their actions.

4. Ideate around the problem and test::

To help solve the problem Mc Neil Consumer Products executives looked at solutions and tested these with the market in very short time frames. They constantly used the customer to test their prototypes with reports being provided every morning during the crisis to the executive team so they could assess the next step. The resultant products that were developed, the safety seals, are still used today by almost all medical and health manufacturing companies.

5. Support the change with the right culture::

All these components however were not the teams greatest achievements. The executive team bucked the corporate system within Johnson and Johnson, who had strict rules and corporate policies that all public issues needed to be dealt with through the Public Relations department. This was a dramatic change and ran against everything executives across America understood. While the executive team worked closely with the PR department it drove the agenda for dealing with the issue focussing it around the customer. 

No matter whether you agree with the similarities to design thinking or not, the actions taken by the Johnson and Johnson is a dream case study that PR professional have used time and time again to show the value of a good PR department. However when you look at the tactics and activities undertaken there is a an unavoidable demonstration of key elements of the design thinking principles that demonstrate the power of cultural change in any design thinking process. 

It is worth taking note that implementing a design thinking process from a consulting firm does not often, if ever, deliver the outcomes you would expect without a supporting change in the company culture.

To have real outcomes you need real change and that has to come from the culture of an organisation which is reset to support new ways of thinking and product development. People have to want to change and the leaders must be prepared to reject their traditional resource dependancies for more sustainable ones that produce an environment of creativity and risk taking. And that goes all the way through to the top. 

Akqire is a strategic design company located in Melbourne. We collaborate with companies that are on a mission - to create innovative products and services that change their competitive landscape.