Kenvue’s stock tumbled when U.S. President Donald Trump, with Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., standing behind him, declared that its product, Tylenol, leads to autism in children when taken by mothers during pregnancy. As social channels were flooded with misinformation supporting the evidenceless claim, it’s easy to imagine the stock continuing to slide, mirroring the trajectory launched by attacks on Bud Light.

Remarkably, the stock recovered after one day, thanks largely to Tylenol’s savvy and almost perfect response to the crisis.

Tylenol isn’t the first brand to find itself in President Trump’s crosshairs. It is unlikely to be the last. In this short, midweek episode, Neville and Shel explore what the company got right, and what other companies can do to prepare for their turn in the glare of the presidential spotlight.

Links from this episode:

• The US President Called Your Product Dangerous. What Do You Do Now? – Darden Report Online


• How Companies Can Respond To Allegations Their Products Are Dangerous


• Tylenol says old post ‘taken of out context’ by White House 


• Tylenol maker responds to Trump’s acetaminophen claims


• Tylenol is Just the Latest Brand Trump Has Picked a Fight With


• Tylenol’s Maker Shows How to Respond to Crisis


• Tylenol maker shares rebound a day after Trump’s unfounded claims about its safety


• Lawsuits against Tylenol’s maker get a boost after Trump’s comments


• Tylenol Issues Clarification After White House Resurfaces 2017 Tweet on Usage During Pregnancy


• ‘Highly concerning’: Major medical groups react to Trump’s claim that Tylenol is linked to autism

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 27.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on [Neville’s blog](https://www.nevillehobson.io/) and [Shel’s blog](https://holtz.com/blog/).

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript

@nevillehobson (00:00 )

Hi everyone, and welcome to episode number 483 of For Immediate Release. I’m Neville Hobson in the UK.

Shel Holtz (00:07 )

And this is Shel Holtz in the U.S.

If you manage a brand today, here’s a scenario you actually have to plan for. A single, high-profile figure with a massive audience declares your product dangerous without credible evidence. And the story just blows up across cable, X, TikTok, the news. This is not a hypothetical. That’s where Tylenol found itself after President Trump asserted that acetaminophen taken during pregnancy can lead to autism.

The claim doesn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny, but it did what these claims always do. It spread, it stuck, and it spooked people. So what do you do when your product is suddenly the villain of the day? The Darden School at the University of Virginia framed the choice starkly. You can keep your head down and hope the cycle moves on, or you can push back fast, clearly, and repeatedly. Their advice leans hard to option two, anchored in what they call the four Ts.

timeliness, transparency, trust, and tenacity. Respond quickly, show your work, over-communicate the facts, and stick with it longer than the news cycle would suggest. Importantly, don’t get into a personality contest with the attacker. Keep it respectful but firm, and put your history, your standards, and your science front and center. Crisis pros will recognize that playbook. Forbes Crisis columnist Edward Siegel made a similar argument the same day.

Assume confusion is your default environment. Get your narrative out immediately and synchronize legal, medical, and corporate voices before the vacuum fills with speculation. He also stresses preparation. If you wait to write the plan until you’re trending, you’re already too late. So how did Tylenol’s maker Kenview do? On speed and tone, they moved quickly and they stayed in their lane. In on-air and short-form video responses, they reiterated a constant message.

Acetaminophen remains the recommended first-line option for pain and fever in pregnancy when used as directed, and their guidance has not changed. No name-calling, no politics, just reinforcement of established guidance and a promise to keep sharing facts as they have them. They also benefited from credible third parties saying what they couldn’t credibly say about themselves.

And I remember this from my days at Allergan. We had a medical advisory board made up of ophthalmologists that we could turn to to make public statements. They didn’t receive money from us. They were volunteers, but they were tied to us. They were familiar with our products and could be very, very helpful as credible third party voices. In the Tylenol case, major medical organizations publicly pushed back on the claim.

@nevillehobson (02:39 )

and

Shel Holtz (02:53 )

emphasizing the lack of evidence for a causal link and the potential risks of not treating fever during pregnancy. That chorus was immediate and visible in mainstream coverage, which matters because parents weren’t going to go spelunking in PubMed in the middle of a scare. They wanted to hear doctors on the six o’clock news. Another thing Kenview got right, they didn’t let market rumors set the narrative. While the stock dipped on day one, as you might expect,

It rebounded the next day as cooler heads and clearer information landed. That’s a reminder to communicators that investors are another primary audience in these moments. You can’t let medical misinformation turn into a capital market story because you were slow to brief. There was also a potential booby trap that Kenview navigated reasonably well. An old context-free social post about pregnant women avoiding Tylenol started recirculating.

and was seized on by partisan accounts as an aha proof point. The brand clarified the context and restated its guidance. The lesson for the rest of us is that social archeology is part of the crisis prep. Now, you need a rapid old posts review the moment a story breaks so you can get ahead of whatever’s about to be resurfaced. Zooming out, there are broader takeaways for communicators whose brands could be targeted by a political figure or

anyone with a megaphone and a base. First, build your science bench before you need it. You want independent credentialed experts ready to validate or correct claims within hours, not days. That means pre-briefing medical societies, key opinion leaders, and credible third party validators about your safety data and your monitoring plan. The Darden piece got it right. Facts alone rarely win the day, but facts delivered by trusted humans stand a fighting chance. Second,

Treat employees as a primary audience. In moments like this, they’re your most important ambassadors and your most vulnerable stakeholders. Darden explicitly calls out the need to communicate aggressively with your own employees. Give them the message, the FAQs and the why, and equip managers to handle tough conversations at the school gate, the church picnic, and inside the store aisle. Third, scenario test the politics.

This is not a normal product risk issue, it’s identity content. You can expect pylons, boycotts, and gotcha screenshots. Prepare neutral, values-based language that focuses on consumer safety and evidence, not the personalities involved. Resist the temptation to l