After a series of costly court rulings forcing them to pay millions of dollars related to cancer deaths and defective hip transplant parts, Johnson & Johnson is at its lowest consumer perception point in nearly three and a half years.
The silver lining is it seems the negative feedback is isolated to the parent company, and not seriously impacting two of their leading individual brands, Band Aid and Tylenol.
Since February 8th, Johnson & Johnson’s perception levels have dropped by two-thirds. In that same time span, Band Aid’s levels climbed 18% while Tylenol slipped 13%.
Johnson & Johnson just spent several months bouncing back to normal perception levels after a year-long slide from the second half of 2014 through the first half of 2015. That slow drop, where J&J’s perception was nearly cut in half, seems to have been fueled by continuous news about Ebola virus vaccine development and lawsuits being filed by women over talcum powder potentially causing ovarian cancer.
YouGov BrandIndex measured Johnson & Johnson, Band Aid and Tylenol with its Buzz score, which asks respondents: "If you've heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?"
