McNeil Consumer Products Company: Tylenol Post-Tampering Advertising campaign

Mariko Fujinaka

McNeil Consumer Products Company, a division of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), manufactured the analgesic brand Tylenol, which dominated the $1.2 billion pain reliever industry in the early 1980s.

McNeil Consumer Products Company: Tylenol Post-Tampering Advertising campaign

Mariko Fujinaka

Overview

McNeil Consumer Products Company, a division of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), manufactured the analgesic brand Tylenol, which dominated the $1.2 billion pain reliever industry in the early 1980s. Made of acetaminophen, Tylenol was marketed as a safe alternative to aspirin and was available by prescription and over the counter (OTC) beginning in the 1950s. Tylenol grew in popularity in the 1970s as competitors entered the analgesic category, forcing McNeil to invest more heavily in mass advertising. As a result, Tylenol captured the category's top share rank in 1977 and...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands