Community Relations Efforts

Johnson & Johnson is a family of companies that cares deeply about their customers. Not only is this shown through their products that help people live healthier every day lifestyles, but is also shown through their corporate giving and volunteer efforts from their employees. The company as a whole has worked every day for the last 120 years helping to benefit the lives of their communities. The desire of their employees to make a difference has inspired every invention and product that J&J has brought to human health.

 Since 1987, J&J has been involved with many philanthropic efforts. They are the founding sponsors of a non-profit organization called "Safe Kids Worldwide", which is an organization that promotes child safety in the U.S and 18 other countries around the world. There mission is primarily to teach children and adults how to prevent unintentional injury and death. Another program they are directly involved with is called the "One Child, One Blanket Disaster Relief Program". This program was started by a scientist of J&J and a few employees in which they were making blankets to send to children affected by disasters. Blanket donations started being made not just from J&J employees, but from friends, families, colleagues, communities and continued building up from there. In the program's first year 1,900 blankets were collected and went to displaced children in Pakistan and to children affected by hurricanes in Central America. These are just two of the many organizations that J&J contributes to by helping to make beneficial change to our world.

The Yale/Stanford-Johnson & Johnson Global Health Scholars Program selected the most promising candidates from major American institutions, mainly Yale University or Stanford University, and sends them to one of six overburdened health care sites in places such as Indonesia, South Africa or Uganda. The participants spend 6 weeks in this challenging environment with limited medical supplies and take away with them enhanced medical skills and a great learning experience. This is a special way for J&J to give back to their own employees & future employees.

Johnson & Johnson recently showed their care efforts by helping the people of Japan after their recent natural disaster. Since the earthquake stuck, J&J has worked diligently to see how they could play a role with relief efforts. Thus far, they have committed $8 million in funds in addition to considerable product donations of medical supplies and consumer hygiene products. They have also said that they "are working with local partners to determine the best opportunities to lend assistance and will continue to assess needs as the situation evolves".

All in all Johnson & Johnson shows spectacular community relations and care efforts not only in the United States, but all around the world.

Media Relations

Since the Tylenol Crisis of 1982, Johnson & Johnson has been a leading role model for all companies and organizations ever handling crises. They are considered by public relations experts to be one of the best crisis managers in the history of public relations. To continue this affective managing of crises, Johnson & Johnson has a "news" section on their main web page dedicated to their consumers, doctors, patients, etc.

Considering J&J 's products are mainly to help the health and well-bring of it's customers, managing their reputation is very important. They need to make sure they have complete trust from their customers and clients. To do this they maintain a very honest and open relationship with their press by having an organized news section on their web page. It breaks down their news into three sub-categories; Corporate News, Product and Operating Company News and Financial News. They post all of their press releases from over the last two years, as well as a personal section for media professionals to have a more direct line of communication to their media relations department.

I read a few of the articles that fell under the Product and Operating Company News Section. It seems that whoever writes their press releases have a good background in writing. I would guess that the author of most of these work in their media relations department. I also went on  New York Times to see how different issues were portrayed. A recent recall dilemma that Johnson & Johnson dealt with was the recall of tens of thousands of artificial hips. Though some believe that they didn't respond quick enough due to complaints that were coming four years earlier, their statements showed them taking responsibility. One that came from a New York Times article was: “We are committed to assisting patients and health care providers by providing information through multiple channels and paying for the costs of doctor visits, tests and procedures associated with the recall". Through the few articles I read about this recall, none of the journalist seemed to place Johnson & Johnson in a negative light. This caused me to believe that they hold solid relationships with the media and they handle their media relations activities very proactively.

"Using Social Media for Social Good"

Johnson & Johnson is very involved in social media.  They use Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and blogging. They are very active and up to date with their postings and keep a good relationship with their consumers through these social media outlets. By having so many different faces all over the internet they are allowing consumers to contact them more conveniently and communicate with them more effectively.

On Facebook, J&J has a main network called the Johnson & Johnson Network. This gives all their followers an open line for discussion on J&J products, concerns or just general comments. Their Facebook page acts as a home base for their overall social media appearances. There are direct links to their blogs, Twitter pages and Youtube channel. They also post health articles and advice that comes straight from their original web page. Their other Facebook page called Nursing Notes by Johnson & Johnson is a publication of the J&J Campaign for Nursing's Future. This page provides information about the nursing community regarding topics presented in "Nursing Notes", a monthly newsletter produced by the J&J campaign. Between these two pages they have nearly 15,000 followers!

On Twitter they have a variety of appearance. Their main page is JNJStories which shares stories from all the family companies of Johnson & Johnson. People can tweet their success stories with J&J by mentioning @JNJstories as well. They also have a page called JNJComm which tweets about a lot of the topics that are mentioned in their blogs. Their last Twitter page is JNJHistory, which tweets about the complete history of Johnson & Johnson companies & their employees.

Johnson & Johnson has also made strong appearances in the blogging world! One of their blogs called JNJ BTW is written by a man named Marc Monseau, who is part of the J&J Media Relations team. He blogs about Johnson & Johnson, what they are doing, how they are doing and why. He writes comments about J&J news and talks openly and directly. In addition, Monseau posts videos, pictures, advertisements and articles. The other J&J blog is called the Kilmer House which tells the historical stories about the early days at Johnson & Johnson. The author, Margaret Gurowitz is a member of the Corporate Communications department at J&J and makes it her goal to discover new stories about the company's early days and people.

Finally, on YouTube there is a  J&J Health Channel that mainly shares videos that promote a better understanding of health. On the channel they also have a video about how they were a sponsor at Blissdom, one of the leading social media conferences held in Tennessee in January 2011. The theme that J&J used was "Using Social Media for Social Good". Johnson & Johnson uses social media as a direct communication line, as a health channel and as an informational tool to connect with all their consumers and audiences. Their multiple appearances on the internet shows that they strongly believe in the power of social media.