As Baby Powder concerns mounted, Johnson & Johnson focused marketing on minority, overweight women: documents GlobeBusiness
A bottle of Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder is seen in a photo illustration taken in New York, on Feb. 24, 2016.In 2006, an arm of the World Health Organization began classifying cosmetic talc such as Baby Powder as “possibly carcinogenic” when women used it as a genital antiperspirant and deodorant, as many had been doing for years. Talc supplier Luzenac America Inc started including that information on its shipments to J&J and other customers.
Adults have been the main users of Johnson’s Baby Powder since at least the 1970s, after pediatricians started warning of the danger to infants of inhaling talc. As adults became ever more crucial to the brand – accounting for 91 per cent of Baby Powder use by the mid-2000s – J&J honed its powder pitches to court a variety of targeted markets, from teen-focused ads touting the product’s “fresh and natural” qualities, to promotions aimed at older minority and overweight women.
“Every time I took a shower, I put Baby Powder on,” recalled Kim, whose ovarian cancer, first diagnosed in 2014, is now in remission. “I put it on my panties, on my clothes, everywhere.” In a lawsuit filed in Mississippi state court in 2014, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood alleges that J&J failed to warn consumers of the risks associated with its talc products and accuses the company of implementing a “racially targeted strategy” for selling Baby Powder after J&J became aware of health concerns. The company focused its marketing on “minority communities expected to be more likely to use the talc products,” Hood claims in the lawsuit.
By 1974, more than 60 per cent of Johnson’s Baby Powder sales were “attributable to adults” who used it on themselves, according to a J&J analysis. In 1989, advertising firm Young & Rubicam submitted a plan to J&J to “initiate a high level of usage” among young women to “augment the weakening baby link.” Under the plan, ads in style magazines like Seventeen, YM, Glamour and Mademoiselle would try to convince teen girls that Johnson’s Baby Powder, “applied daily after showering, is a simple, feminine way to smell clean and fresh during the day.
It was also in 2006 that the International Agency for Research on Cancer , an arm of the World Health Organization, classified perineal use of talc as “possibly carcinogenic,” saying available research provided “limited evidence” it caused cancer in humans. That came about 20 years after IARC classified “talc containing asbestiform fibres” as “carcinogenic to humans,” its highest-risk classification.
The company published an advertorial in 2008 prepared for distribution with Johnson’s baby products in which the firm’s founders, Sandra Miller Jones and Lafayette Jones, said they “welcome” J&J as a partner. A 2009 presentation laying out the “Powder media plan” highlights that it will reach 31 million people “in the South ,” and that “43 per cent of our plan will focus on the top 10 overweight states in the nation.”
J&J’s overall Baby Powder media advertising budget increased to a proposed $495,000 for 2010, up 71 per cent from $288,000 in 2009, driven by more dedicated spending toward promotions for overweight women. All the radio promotions would be “based on the weather,” she wrote. “If it’s hot and humid, we’ll run that week. If it’s rainy or colder, we won’t.”
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