J&J Recalls Grape-flavored Children's Tylenol: Another Missed Opportunity for Social Media

[Great minds think alike! Be sure to read Update at end of this post.]

Here's another case where CHEAP social media -- ie, YouTube -- could have been used by a pharmaceutical company to support patients using its products, but was not.

Johnson & Johnson DID use social media -- Twitter -- to inform followers of its decision to recall of U.S., Infants’ TYLENOL® Oral Suspension, 1 oz. Grape. According to a letter sent to J&J employees' Denice Torres, who’s the President of McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, said:

"We’re recalling the product at the retail level after receiving a small number of complaints from consumers who reported difficulty using the product’s SimpleMeasure™ dosing system. SimpleMeasure™ includes a dosing syringe, which a parent or caregiver inserts into a protective cover, or “flow restrictor,” at the top of the bottle to measure the proper dose. In some cases, the flow restrictor was pushed into the bottle when inserting the dosing syringe. No adverse events associated with this issue have been reported to date and the risk of a serious adverse medical event is remote."

The letter was posted on the JNJBTW Blog (see here), to which the Twitter post mentioned above linked. J&J will offer people a refund, which is good. But are they abandoning the new dosing system, which is also a good idea? Perhaps it needs a new design, but even so, it should include instructions for use -- and not just written instructions, which many people won't understand. Video would be better.

So, I immediately thought: "Why didn't J&J post a video on YouTube that showed people how to use the dosing syringe?"

Such a video would be almost as easy and cheap for J&J to create as the post to JNJBTW. And it would be more likely to be seen by consumers because YouTube is the second -- maybe now the first -- most used search engine on the Internet! The video could also be embedded within the product web site. [Or even at the end of blog posts such as this one!]

I did a quick search of the product web site and found no information on how to use the SimpleMeasure™ dosing system and no video.

Last week I attended the ePharma Summit, which included a popular presentation titled "I wish I'd Done That! Social Media." Presenters would review competitors' social media campaigns that they liked.

What we really need is a session on "The Social Media We Should Have Done, But Didn't!." I think I will gather my contenders for this session and post them here!

Meanwhile, I hope this gives J&J an idea.

UpDate:
I just learned learned via a Twitter post from @JNJComm at 10:05 AM that there is a YouTube video on How To Use Infants' TYLENOL® SimpleMeasure™: Watch a video about how to use Infants’ TYLENOL Simple Measure > http://www.youtube.com/tylenol