When Trust Becomes a Casualty: What Johnson & Johnson Teaches Us About Customer Betrayal

In my last blog, I explored how some large companies treat customers as nothing more than account numbers — faceless entries on a balance sheet. Ironically, while reflecting on that topic, I began reading No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson by Gardiner Harris, a former New York Times reporter. What I discovered was both shocking and deeply relevant to how we think about customer experience and corporate ethics.

Johnson & Johnson is a name synonymous with care, comfort, and trust. For generations, its baby powder and Band-Aids have been fixtures in family homes. But behind the wholesome image lies a story that challenges everything we thought we knew about this iconic brand.

According to Harris, internal company documents and lawsuits reveal that Johnson & Johnson was aware of the potential for asbestos contamination in its talc products as far back as the 1950s and 1960s. And yet, tests from at least 1971 through the early 2000s repeatedly showed traces of asbestos. Knowing the dangers of asbestos, the products remained on the market and was used by millions of parents on their babies every single day.

Harris makes a devastating claim: “For all intents and purposes, Johnson & Johnson was a criminal enterprise.”

It’s hard to imagine. A company of such stature, willing to gamble with public health — and with its most vulnerable customers — for the sake of profit. But perhaps the most perplexing part of the story is the contrast. This is the same company that once became a case study in corporate integrity for how it handled the Tylenol tampering crisis in the 1980s. Then, Johnson & Johnson acted decisively, recalling products and putting customer safety above all else.

So what changed?

Somewhere along the way, money became the opium of the boardroom. The moral compass that once guided decision-making gave way to financial addiction.

The company’s role in the opioid crisis offers another painful example. Long before Purdue Pharma’s notorious OxyContin, Johnson & Johnson was pushing its fentanyl patch, Duragesic — despite knowing its deadly risks. The parallels are disturbing. In the end, the company paid $5 billion to settle opioid-related claims, without admitting wrongdoing.

How does a company go from protecting customers at any cost to protecting profits above all else?

At its heart, this story isn’t just about Johnson & Johnson. It’s about what happens when organisations lose sight of their purpose — when customers become data points instead of human beings.

Trust, once broken, is almost impossible to repair. And in the world of customer experience, trust is everything.

If there’s one takeaway from J&J’s tragic paradox, it’s this: doing the right thing isn’t a marketing strategy — it’s the foundation of lasting success. When companies forget that, no amount of branding or PR can save them.