A month ago I gave a lecture on crisis management at the e-10 conference. It was a tale of two cases. The Tylenol Cyanide case where 7 people died in 1982 in Chicago after bottles were tampered with and returned to the shelves and the Israeli Remedia case in 2003 where 6 babies died because Remedia had changed their formula to not include Vitamin B1 and not state it on the package.

Both cases are tragic – but their circumstances are different. One was an error by the company and the other was an outside nutjob tampering with product. The endings were completely different – Tylenol was completely transparent, accepted all of the blame, took all of their products off of the shelves for months as the investigation progressed and ended up coming back with a new tamper proof bottle which allowed them to charge more for the same product. They also earned America’s trust with how they handled the situation.

Remedia blamed an outside manufacturer, didn’t accept responsibility, wasn’t transparent and ended up going out of business.

My question to the audience was:

How could Remedia have handled things differently so that their ending wouldn’t be quite as bad?

I knew what I was looking for from the audience, but it took awhile to get there. First off someone pointed out that the two cases are completely different. The public will want revenge on a mistake that results in dead babies, which is true, but am still of the belief that handling it differently would have saved the company.

Eventually someone mentioned that Remedia could create a device that checks the mineral / vitamin levels inside of formula in order to show the public that they never wanted this to happen again (which was exactly what I was looking for).

Remedia was responsible for the tragedy. They should have had random testing of all lots in place to check the product coming in from Germany before it hit the shelves in Israel. They didn’t. It was their fault and they should have accepted that.

However, the point is that Remedia should have been transparent, apologetic and work to fix the problem not only for themselves but for all other baby food companies.  (The full story of what happened here.) Furthermore, Remedia should have taken their products off the shelves immediately, and not the Health Ministry. The loss of trust from their customer is a result of their lack of action, their lack of transparency and their lack of admitting responsibility.

Unfortunately, crisis happens. What matters is how you handle it.

Here are some general rules to follow if something bad happens:

1. Be transparent.
   • If you don’t have information, admit you don’t have information. If you are working with police, let people know. If it’s your fault (and ultimately it’s always your fault if something happens, if only because you didn’t set up the precautions before hand) admit it.
2. Put your customers first.
   • Even if it will cost the company millions of dollars to recall every single item from the shelf, do it, before a government official does it for you. Being proactive in showing customers you care more about them then your bottom line is critical in regaining their trust.
3. Work to fix the problem.
   • This is obvious. Tylenol created tamper proof bottles which solved their issue, but it also solved an issue for the entire industry. The win for Tylenol is that they came up with it months before everyone else and gained the trust of their customers by working so hard to make sure no one would tamper with another bottle again.