It hasn’t been a great couple of years for Johnson & Johnson. Since 2009, “faulty manufacturing” caused J&J to “recall millions of bottles and packages of Tylenol, Benadryl, Motrin and other over-the-counter medicines,” NBC News reports. While that was happening, pharmacies were starting to push their own private labels.

It got so bad that this past winter, CVS didn’t even stock Tylenol at a number of its stores. That isn't all. The company is facing over 10,000 lawsuits regarding the alleged failure of its Depuy metal-on-metal hip transplants, and it just got done paying $181 million in settlements over off-label marketing of its antipsychotic drug, Risperdal, Ad Age notes.

As Mad Men’s Don Draper says, if you don’t like what people are saying, you change the conversation. So J&J is going all-in on a rebrand, putting up to $30 million into a play-to-the-heartstrings Band-Aid of a campaign called “For All You Love.”Continue reading...

Last year, Starbucks declared its support of same-sex marriage, which resulted in a boycott by the National Organization for Marriage. The coffee chain hasn't backed down one bit, however, as CEO Howard Schultz continues to blur the line between business and the personal lives of his millions of customers.

At a recent annual shareholders meeting, Tom Strobhar, a shareholder and founder of the Corporate Morality Action Center, an anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage organization, suggested the boycott had a negative impact on first quarter sales and earnings. The ever-outspoken CEO swiftly responded, “Not every decision is an economic decision... The lens in which we are making that decision is through the lens of our people. We employ over 200,000 people in this company, and we want to embrace diversity."

Schultz then told Strobhar he was more than welcome to sell his shares and take his money elsewhere. While the remarks seem brazen, Starbuck’s stance on hot-button political issues and support of equal rights for its employees have been a part of the brand’s long-term strategy to increase internal brand engagement and decrease turnover. What's more, taking a position on causes that affect its workforce has had a positive impact on its bottom line.Continue reading...

The heads of more US restaurant brands are taking out their frustrations on Obamacare, with David Overton of the Cheesecake Factory becoming the latest. And even if you agree with their plaint, their actions prompt the question: Are they only hurting themselves by making a campaign out of their oppostion to the Affordable Care Act and to the new costs it places on their chains, however onerous they may be?

Instead of promoting, say, his chain's holiday campaign to give away 2013 cheesecakes on Facebook, Overton aired his grievances on CBS This Morning, saying that "for those businesses who don't cover their employees [with health insurance already], they'll be in for a very expensive situation." He noted that the Cheesecake Factory already provides some health insurance, but he warned that the costs of complying with Obamacare would be passed on to customers by the industry.Continue reading...

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital celebrates Thanksgiving with messages from its roster of celebrity supporters including Marlo Thomas, daughter of founder Danny Thomas, plus Sofia Vergara, Jennifer Aniston, Robin Williams, Michael Strahan, Luis Fonsi, and Shaun White:Continue reading...

"Cher joins 400,000" is not an x-rated film for the AARP set — it's a headline trumpeting news that the singer/actress has signed a petition lobbying Macy's to "dump Trump."

Following Donald Trump's harsh comments against Barack Obama, including a $5 million offer to see the president's passport application and college transcripts, a "boycott Trump" effort has been growing. Macy's CEO was drawn into the fray after protesters zoomed in on Trump's "birther" comments its holiday campaign (top).

Trump's answer to anyone who opposes him is typically a metaphorical version of "you're fired." It's an impotent response to a boycott effort as impotent as Trump's hair piece.Continue reading...

Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act no longer faces any obstacles to becoming the law of the land, now that last week's elections solidified Democrats' hold on the U.S. Senate. But private companies will continue to react to the realities of health-care costs in the interests of their own businesses, to the extent they can and for as long as they can.

Take Walmart: Just after the elections, the nation's largest retailer has announced hikes in the cost of workers' health-care coverage of 8 percent to 36 percent because of the rising prices of medical services and health insurance. And some of Walmart's 1.4 million U.S. employees already have reacted by considering dropping their own coverage, according to CNBC.

The cost of Walmart's most popular health-insurance plan, for example, will go up by $2 per paycheck, or 13 percent. Still, overall, Walmart said that average costs its employees will bear for the coverage should only rise by about 4 percent in 2013 because the company has eliminated some high-premium plans and trimmed some services.Continue reading...

Nike has its FuelBand, the bracelet that tracks everything a “serious” athlete wants to know about so she or he can finish their workout and yap about whatever their NikeFuel number is at that moment. But soon people will have a whole new and much more invasive tracking system: one that you actually eat like a pill.

This new microchip the size of a grain of sand isn’t built for athletes who want bragging rights. The idea is to help the, well, unhealthy among us track their bodies better so doctors can know what the ill need on a regular basis. For someone who needs to take pills on a regular basis, the device can inform them when their body needs the medicine.

The FDA has just approved what PC World is calling a smart pill from Proteus Digital Health “that keeps track of your insides and relays that medical information back to your healthcare provider.” The so-called ingestible digital sensors are activated by mixing with the stomach’s digestive fluids and then transmitting to a patch on the patient’s skin, the site notes. The patch then sends "vital information about your medication-taking behaviors and how your body is responding" to the doctor or nurse’s mobile device.Continue reading...

Brand Obama is facing a significant challenge today as so-called Obamacare (the sweeping healthcare reform law that was introduced on March 2010) goes before the Supreme Court (ABC News is live-blogging). It's a bit of a setback as the president is also actively campaigning for re-election in November.

The Obama Campaign’s social call-to-action documentary The Road We've Traveled, available on the President’s new YouTube platform, is the jewel in the crown of the President’s social media persona.

Directed by the Academy Award winning director of An Incovenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim, it's narrated by Tom Hanks and has racked up almost 2 million views since it debuted on March 15th.Continue reading...