As a global company, Johnson & Johnson communicates with people in a variety of languages. This holds true today as it did over a century ago. Shortly after the company was founded, Johnson & Johnson embraced multilanguage advertising to reach doctors, surgeons, employees and the public.
In the early 1890s, Johnson & Johnson was less than a decade old as a company. Founded in 1886 to make the first mass-produced sterile surgical dressings and sutures, in its first few years the company had put on the market other groundbreaking innovations like sterile absorbent cotton (1886), the first commercial first aid kits (1888), maternity kits to make childbirth safer (1894), the first mass-produced women’s sanitary products (1897) and the first mass-produced sterile absorbent gauze surgical sponges, to name just a few.
Johnson & Johnson identified a broad range of unmet needs in that era through conversations with a wide variety of doctors, surgeons and others, and the company innovated to meet those needs. That openness to what we would refer to today as a wide variety of stakeholders led Johnson & Johnson to an early inclusivity in meeting needs. The company’s unusual focus on science-based women’s health more than 120 years ago in an era of patent medicines and unscientific “cures” was part of that inclusivity. Another example is the company’s outreach to Spanish-speaking doctors, retail pharmacists and consumers in Latin America and the United States, and its embrace of newly arrived immigrants beginning in the 1890s.
Johnson & Johnson had begun selling its products globally as early as 1888 through local sales agents across the world, and that included a strong and growing business in Latin America. The earliest Spanish language Johnson & Johnson advertising in our archives—for sterile surgical dressings—dates to around 1889, just three years after the company’s founding. In the 1890s, the company took that a step further: Johnson & Johnson created its own in-house Spanish language department to meet the needs of Spanish-speaking medical professionals, retail customers and consumers in Latin America and the United States. The department was based out of the company’s New York office at first, and it translated physician educational materials, like Johnson & Johnson’s pioneering sterile surgery manual, Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment, into Spanish as well as producing a wide range of ads.
The department provided Spanish language materials like postcards and order forms to the Spanish-speaking members of the company’s sales force and had its own Spanish language Johnson & Johnson letterhead, which read “Johnson & Johnson, Quimicos Manufactureros,” or “Johnson & Johnson, Manufacturing Chemists.” By 1898, the Spanish language department had begun to attract attention: The editor of a prominent pharmaceutical trade publication reached out to the company to learn more about how Johnson & Johnson handled translation and printing.
Johnson & Johnson also published El Mensajero, a Spanish language version of its popular Red Cross Messenger, a trade publication for the retail pharmacists who sold the company’s products. The Spanish Language Department also was a training ground for future leaders: Two young employees in the department, one from Puerto Rico and the other from Mexico, would go on to lead sales in Colombia and an operating company in Mexico for Johnson & Johnson in the early 20th century.
Johnson & Johnson’s earliest history coincided with the period of rapid industrialization and urbanization in the United States. This brought with it a boom in immigration, with more than 20 million people coming to the U.S. to make a new home between 1890 and 1924.
The company’s hometown of New Brunswick, New Jersey, was home to one of the largest historical Hungarian-American communities in the United States. Around 1892, Johnson & Johnson began to employ members of that growing community. These hardworking and loyal employees impressed the company’s founders, who asked for recommendations for further hiring. Hungarian immigrants began moving to New Brunswick in increasing numbers to work for Johnson & Johnson and the other companies that formed the city’s economic base.
Johnson & Johnson published employee notices in English and Hungarian and provided these new employees with free English lessons and other educational classes, a visiting nurse who spoke Hungarian and help enrolling their children in local schools. Hungarian-speaking women employees at Johnson & Johnson formed the Ilona Zrinyi Club, a counterpart to the Laurel Club. The Ilona Zrinyi Club, named for a 17th century Hungarian noblewoman who became a Hungarian national hero, gave these women employees opportunities to socialize, develop leadership qualities and make new friends. Today, there are employees at Johnson & Johnson’s New Jersey locations whose ancestors were part of this historical employee community.
The 1910s saw increasing calls to restrict U.S. immigration, with some segments of American society unwilling to welcome newly arrived families, a sentiment that increased prior to the U.S. entry into World War I and the Immigration Act of 1917, which imposed new restrictions on immigration. It was during this atmosphere in the 1910s that Johnson & Johnson began advertising in 15 languages in the United States to reach recently arrived immigrants. The company advertised in German, Polish, Czech, Slavonic, Danish, Swedish, Italian, Yiddish, Spanish, Chinese, French, Hungarian, Finnish, Japanese and Romanian, reflecting the origins of these newly arrived Americans.
Johnson & Johnson encouraged the retail pharmacists who sold the company’s products to treat newly arrived families with respect, make them feel welcome in their pharmacies and to learn how to greet them in the languages they spoke, an example of the company’s inclusive attitude. Johnson & Johnson provided retail pharmacists with multilanguage one-page information sheets that could be folded and mailed, show cards (ads that could be displayed in pharmacies) and electros (ad layouts used in the production of printed newspaper ads). This effort was led by Fred Kilmer, the company’s scientific director, who in 1915 wrote: “No man and no family can scarcely be said to be so unimportant that it is not worth while to seek their trade.”
“Many people who enter your store would like to be greeted in their native language,” advised Fred Kilmer in the Red Cross Messenger in 1916. [Red Cross Messenger, Vol IX, No. 3, November 1916, published by Johnson & Johnson, p. 86] In that same issue, Kilmer explained: “Attract their attention with a hanger in their own language, make them feel you appreciate their trade and you will get it.”
Throughout the 20th century, Johnson & Johnson continued to embrace inclusivity, hiring women scientists beginning in 1908, prioritizing the hiring World War II veterans with service disabilities, partnering with the National Urban League and participating in President Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 Plans for Progress program to increase diversity in hiring.
Today, more than a century later, Johnson & Johnson is a global company with employees in countries around the world. These employees speak a multitude of languages, work together on cross-border teams and bring their unique talents, skills and perspectives to the workplace to do the work of solving some of the world’s toughest healthcare challenges. The company’s commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion ensures that its employees reflect the people it serves, just as Johnson & Johnson multilanguage advertising reflected the growing communities the company employed and served more than a century ago.
Johnson & Johnson’s early heritage of respecting diversity and advancing inclusion is one of the things that helped the company succeed in its early years, just as its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion across the world ensures Johnson & Johnson’s success in meeting its commitments today.