Sales of Toyota cars and trucks are now down 12.4% and auto manufacturers such as Ford, Nissan, Honda and Hyundai are moving quickly to attract the attention of Toyota’s customers. Allegations that Toyota attempted to cover up the problem has resulted in bad publicity for the company and the news of pending congressional hearings doesn’t bode very well for Toyota’s future.

Which makes me wonder: Is there a magic marketing bullet that can salvage Toyota’s longtime brand-image of trustworthiness, consistency and reliability?

While the final outcome remains to be seen, perhaps it would be wise for Toyota to take a look at the damage control methods implemented by Tylenol following a horrific poisoning incident almost three-decades ago.

In 1982, seven people in the Chicago region died after taking Tylenol pain-relief capsules that had been intentionally laced with potassium cyanide by an unknown killer.

Upon hearing the news, Tylenol immediately distributed warnings to hospitals, distributors and stores, and simultaneously halted Tylenol production. They issued a nationwide recall of all Tylenol products and advertised in the national media – at an expense of over $50 million dollars! – alerting consumers not to consume any Tylenol products until the situation was resolved.

The executives at Tylenol clearly understood how to communicate with the public in times of disaster and were applauded in the media for being honest and transparent with the public.

Most importantly, realizing that the deaths occurred as a result of an unknown killer tampering with bottles on store shelves, Tylenol took a proactive approach to regain the trust of consumers by designing a revolutionary triple-sealed package that would prevent product tampering from occurring.

Coupled with an aggressive product re-launch, heavy price promotions and the positive image of having been honest with the public in a time of disaster, Tylenol’s market share jumped from a dismal 8% to 35% in the year following the incident.

The Tylenol fiasco is now considered to be a textbook response for creating effective public relations solutions and is studied by business executives and marketers alike. In a nutshell, these are the three key attributes in Tylenol’s successful handling of the situation:

COMMUNICATION

By keeping the public informed of the problem and taking responsibility to ensure that nobody else would be affected by it, Tylenol created an image for itself as a company that genuinely cared about its customers – even at the expense of losing money. Tylenol communicated with the public via multiple venues including newspaper ads, radio commercials and press releases.

TRANSPARENCY

Throughout the ordeal, Tylenol was in contact with the FBI and police authorities, giving over its resources and databases to help figure out how the problem originated. Tylenol also held daily news conferences updating the media on the latest occurrences, successfully keeping the public in the loop and building brand credibility in the process.

RESPONSIBILITY

Tylenol immediately pulled all of its products off store shelves and instructed consumers to discard all Tylenol products. They also offered a $100,000 reward for the capture of the person responsible for lacing the Tylenol bottles with poison. Lastly, they made it their business to ensure that such a situation would never again occur by designing new bottles with a tamper-proof seal, reassuring consumers that all Tylenol products were 100% safe.

So where does this all leave us? Bezras Hashem, we should never have to deal with any type of public relations fiasco. However, every company should be prepared if necessary, on how to handle even the most difficult of circumstances.

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