Kenvue’s Narrative Predicament, and the Signals it Sent

November 4, 2025

Is your narrative trying to tell you something?

Kenvue's acquisition this week by Kimberly Clark was an anticlimactic ending for the two-year-old J&J spinoff. The consumer health giant's recent struggles included a 35% drop in share price, the ouster of its CEO in July, a 3.5% Q3 net sales decline, and continued pressure from activist investors. Add to that its flagship painkiller Tylenol getting mired in a misinformation crisis.

As those problems emerged, there were even deeper signals in Kenvue's narrative.

Last summer, I independently ran narrative audits on Kenvue and its consumer health peers Reckitt and Haleon. Kenvue scored lowest of the three in overall narrative strength, with Kenvue 77/100 vs. Haleon 81 and Reckitt 86.

I'm not suggesting that my Signal Score narrative audit predicts stock price collapse, or that a better story would have allowed Kenvue to continue as a standalone company.

But I do know that narratives are indicators of a company's health, and narrative weaknesses often signal misaligned leadership, unclear strategy, and confused stakeholders.

In Signal Score terms, when leaders don't articulate a clear, distinctive point of view, it's an early sign of strategic "fuzziness" before it shows up in quarterly earnings. A confused narrative = a confused strategy = a confused market position.

My narrative audit showed a company with high marks for commitments and stakeholder connections, but significantly lower scores for strategic priorities and point of view, two key dimensions where Reckitt and Haleon excelled. Kenvue's five strategic priorities read more like internal business unit descriptions than strategies, lacking the coherence and integration that gave its peers narrative strength.

As the audit noted, Kenvue's breadth of priorities "approached the threshold of unfocused execution" and created "uncertainty about long-term strategic direction." The old adage applies: "When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority."

Would a better story have saved Kenvue? No. Strong stories don’t save struggling companies.

But a stronger, tighter narrative might have reflected a leadership team fully aligned on purpose and priorities, the kind of strategic clarity that gives companies options when they face headwinds.

Instead, my narrative audit found a company that wasn’t articulating where it was going, or why it mattered. A few months later, with only one option, it no longer needed to.

What’s your narrative saying about your company?