How to Handle a Communication Crisis. An Epistemological Approach and a Neuro-Linguistic Contribution

40 3.2 Prodromes of an epidemic disease In the typology created at the beginning of this chapter the second type of warning signs are the ones which occur to other organizations that are involved in the same industry we are in or that have some aspects in common with our organization. This kind of warning signs gives any organization similar to the one hit by the crisis the possibility to take the right vaccine and, by so doing, avoid to get involved in the same crisis. An example is the crisis that in 1982 hit the Johnson & Johnson Company. Briefly, a J&J product (a medicine in capsules for relieving pain and reducing fever, called Tylenol) was contaminated with cyanide, this contamination provoked the death of seven people. J&J reacted readily by recalling millions of Tylenol bottles and putting back the product on the market with triple tamper-resistant packaging. The American pharmaceutical company spent hundreds of millions of dollars for recovering from the crisis; this huge amount of money was saved by all those companies that, being exposed to the same risk of sabotage, rushed to take the precautionary measures and adopted the same counter-measure of tamper-resistant packaging. The list of examples of crises that could have hit a high number of organizations but have been avoided by most thanks to the adoption of precautionary measures is very long 36 . Much more difficult is to be aware when something is happening for the very first time and the organization has to face a crisis announced by new or peculiar prodromes. 36 Another example is given by the Exxon Valdez crisis, as Kathleen Fearn-Banks puts it: “Although various controversies about the Exxon spill remained, one thing was certain: The Exxon Valdez was a warning sign, a prodrome for other oil companies. Later British Petroleum (BP) suffered an oil spill in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles. BP reacted with haste, even getting underwater photographers to capture images of the hole in the ship for the media” (Fearn-Banks, 2007, p. 77).