Trust, Once Lost, Is Hard to Regain

Who is it that you trust most? Not, probably, someone you've just met -- it takes time to build a trusting relationship. And if that trust is violated, it will take a very long time to rebuild it.

This is as true for brands and companies as it is for people.

The current issue of the Harvard Business Review has a long, excellent article by Roger Martin on "customer capitalism", which argues that making customer value the highest corporate priority will pay off better for shareholders than does focusing primarily on shareholder value: "...[If] more companies made customers the top priority, the quality of corporate decision making would improve because thinking about the customer forces you to focus on improving your operations and the products and services you provide, rather than on spinning lines to shareholders."

Among the examples Martin uses are Procter & Gamble, and Johnson & Johnson -- making specific reference to J&J's decision in 1982 to pull every Tylenol capsule in the US off the shelves after seven Chicago-area consumers died from tampered Tylenols. At the time, many expressed surprise that a company would (seemingly) throw profit concerns to the winds, but the bet paid off with soaring loyalty to the product and the company.

Martin may well be rethinking his examples now.

As the New York Times's Natasha Singer reported today, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a J&J division, apparently waited 20 months from receiving its first consumer complaints about moldy-smelling bottles of over-the-counter products to recall batches of such popular medicines as Benadryl, Motrin, Rolaids, and ... Tylenol.

The federal Food and Drug Administation issued a press release on Friday, reporting that McNeil Consumer Healthcare was "voluntarily recalling certain lots of OTC products". The company has set up a website with information on specific lots and on how to return or dispose of the products. The problem has apparently been traced, according to the press release, to "the breakdown of a chemical that is sometimes applied to wood that is used to build wood pallets that transport and store product packaging materials. The health effects of this chemical have not been well studied but no serious events have been documented in the medical literature."

But why did it take so long for the company to take action? Singer quotes a marketing professor from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management: "The FDA comments on Friday were devastating because they make the company seem to be complacent and sloppy."

As a consumer, I have plenty of generic non-branded choices for pain relief. Unless I have a good reason to trust J&J to provide me with a higher level of product quality, why would I pay extra for Tylenol or Motrin?

And now that I'm asking myself these questions, is there anything J&J can do to rebuild my trust? Maybe not.

As the old saw says, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."