e result was extraordinarily sympathetic and accurate coverage of the wreck, coverage which cast the railroad as the compassionate victim of an unfortunate occurrence which was beyond its control and unlikely to recur.
In the years since, the public has come to consider public relations as a fairly cynical attempt to manipulate the media, and crisis management is a response both to that increasing cynicism and to the kinds of major crises that can, handled incorrectly, destroy a company. Probably the best-known case cost the corporation in question $100 million, caused the death of seven people - and is universally considered to be a triumph of crisis management.
By September 30, 1982, seven people in the Chicago area had died of cyanide poisoning. All seven had taken Tylenol capsules just before death. Tylenol, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson (J&J), was one of the most successful aspirin substitutes on the market, with $350 million in sales in 1981 and making up 35 percent of the total analgesic market in the U.S. Just three weeks before his death, J&J chair James E. Burke had asked his staff to devise a crisis management plan, but even the worst possible scenarios had not prepared the company for such a dramatic occurrence: "Imaginations did not stretch to cyanide-laced capsules and murder" (Pinsdorf 47).
However, J&J's fundamental corporate policy had always emphasized the importance of people over profits, and the company immediately showed that these were not just idle words. J&J faced up to the crisis, including the implications that
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