Posted By
KIM KORTH
on
3/9/2010 1:55 PM
While I am confident you are growing tired of the “Toyota Story”, there have been some developments over the last few days that I think are worthy of comment. In numerous publications, and in some of their own public statements, Toyota has indicated that they are tired of being attacked from all sides and they intend to begin “aggressively fighting back”. Their main areas of concern are:
• Much of the feeding frenzy of negative publicity around Toyota is unfair, and they need to start laying a foundation for why they believe most of the unintended acceleration stories are driver error and not problems with Toyota product performance;
• Most other OEMs have had similar recall issues and safety concerns, but they have not experienced the same degree of governmental and public scrutiny;
• Toyota is a very large employer in the United States, and they need to start taking better advantage of this fact.
All of this is true and, in the current environment, none of it matters. Toyota needs to understand that, fair or not, they are the current “Tiger Woods story” and they are going to have to give the media time to get tired of it and move on to the next big subject. Taking an aggressive and highly visible public stance will only prolong the interest. Toyota needs to be very careful to not make a bad situation worse. By way of example, I was interviewed by a major Japanese newspaper after Mr. Toyoda’s congressional testimony, and they asked me if I thought he had helped Toyota’s cause in the U.S. To which I replied, “That was not possible. He was in a lose-lose situation, and the only thing he could hope for was to not make the situation worse.” Nothing has changed. The best thing that could happen to Toyota is for the public scrutiny on this issue to begin to lessen so the company can quietly start rebuilding their image and their brand. If they push back in a way that is viewed as insensitive or arrogant, they could do severe and permanent damage to their sales and brand in the U.S. So, while lashing out at critics may be a cathartic experience for Toyota (and something their lawyers want them to do to set up a legal defense against their growing list of lawsuits), we believe this would be a huge mistake.
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