Copyright Adweek
Tylenol has been in the headlines for the last several weeks—though not for reasons any marketer would want. Despite a veritable mountain of clinical evidence to the contrary, on September 22, Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called out Tylenol for potentially leading to autism in children when taken by pregnant women. Now, in an apparent attempt to circle the wagons around its flagship brand, parent company Kenvue has recruited Jon Halvorson as its new CMO. A graduate of the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business, Halvorson was most recently global svp of consumer experience for food conglomerate Mondelēz International. He has also held high-ranking positions at General Motors, and Starcom MediaVest, and Omnicom Media Group. One of Halvorson’s most consequential decisions at Mondelēz—which makes Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers, and Toblerone chocolates, among many other brands—was to harness AI as a means of trimming advertising costs. “Generative AI is revolutionizing the creative process,” he told the Wall Street Journal last year. But at Kenvue, Halvorson will need more than AI to combat the branding challenge the HHS announcement sent tumbling down last month. Shortly after RFK Jr.’s broadside—which President Trump joined by declaring that “Tylenol is not good… don’t take it”—Kenvue returned fire with an announcement stressing that “sound science shows Tylenol is safe and taking acetaminophen does not cause autism.” The communique cited research from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization, and the Autism Science Foundation, among many other respected medical organizations. But a central problem for Kenvue—and, soon, for Halvorson—is that a large portion of the public no longer trusts the advice of public-health authorities.
