Toyota responds on YouTube

You have probably heard about the “sticky accelerator pedal issue” that forced Toyota to recently begin a major recall. Such situations where consumer safety and trust are in danger are always a nightmare for the company that finds itself  down the creek without a paddle (and, of course, also highly unpleasant for the consumers ). In my years as a PR consultant I came close to some cases where product recalls where deemed necessary and of course there are lots of case examples out there for you to study, if you are interested in those kinds of things. Fundamentally, the recall adds another dimension to the regular crisis management and crisis communication because you are dealing with a genuine threat to people’s lives. This isn’t some sort of corporate scandal about e.g. mismanagement of funds – the customers that you earn your living from are suddenly experiencing that your product can hurt them and their families, and that broken trust needs to be handled immediately, delicately and with a lot of empathy.

Which is why I was pleased to see this video below with the president of Toyota USA on YouTube, adressing the problem and trying to regain the trust of Toyota’s customers. There are five basic rules to solving a crisis situation that almost always applies:

1. Stop the accident / prevent whatever went wrong from causing more damage or harm
2. Accept responsibility whenever and whereever you have a responsibility
3. Demonstrate empathy with the people who have suffered in some way because of the problem – show that you are genuinely sorry
4. Give out information regularly and as soon as you have it – keep feeding the news cycle to prevent rumours and speculation
5. Show the way forward – tell your stakeholders what is going to happen now

In the video, the president of Toyota USA, Jim Lentz, does an excellent job on all 5 points. If you listen to his presentation, you can actually cross the items off the list one by one. He demonstrates that he understands that this is about trust – not money – and although he speaks on behalf of 172,000 employees and Toyota dealers, he assumes the full responsibility and apologizes personally, demonstrating empathy and humility.

I got this clip from the Norwegian blog Colt Kommunikasjon by Ole Emil Johnsen, who wrote about it in Toyota-krisen løses med YouTube (in Norwegian). Ole Emil Johnsen notes five things that makes this an interesting case for Toyota and social media enthusiasts in general:

1. The message is personal – it is delivered on camera by a charismatic and genuine spokesperson directly to you – the customer
2. Toyota gets the entire message out – not just a six second sound bite on television or a quote in the newspaper
3. Toyota spreads the message to social media channels used by their customers making it easier to reach them
4. Toyota initiates a dialogue, inviting people to participate, partially enabling them to follow the conversations that their customers are having about the sticky pedal issue
5. Toyota is pro-active and gets their message out there in cyberspace where a lot of the critisism is happening, hopefully thereby influencing the dialogue

If you look at the commentary below, you might get the impression that this little tactic by Toyota isn’t working because the company is really receiving a lot of foul language, but remember this: angry or disappointed people are much more likely to went their anger in an online forum and the ones who do forgive Toyota are most likely still annoyed and weary and not likely to start writing a praise in the comments sections. Time will tell whether this video will help Toyota regain their customers’ trust again. My bet is it will.