Peterson’s Outsider Strategy for J&J Shakes Up Consumer
This article is for subscribers only.
To fix Johnson & Johnson’s disgraced consumer unit, Sandra Peterson took a gamble, jettisoning several well-known brands to concentrate on big sellers like the pain pill Tylenol.
Doing so, she believed, would allow J&J to sharpen quality controls for the remaining products and put more effort into boosting their sales globally. Now, 18 months after Peterson arrived as the highest-ranked outsider ever hired by J&J, she insists that change, and others, are reviving a unit that saw more than 40 brands pulled from store shelves on quality concerns in the three years before she arrived.