Blog

Recently it’s been hard to read or watch any sort of news without hearing something about the car maker Toyota. The brand that’s built a reputation for quality has been dinged up with safety issues leading to millions of cars being recalled and a government investigation.

Now the company is in brand management mode. The commercial below is reaching out to customers with a fairly simple message. We messed up and we’ve stopped production until we fix the cars that are already on the road.

As I saw this commercial, I thought this was about the best way Toyota could handle it. They admit they’ve failed their customers and their committing to make things rights.

My wife, who is a communications person as well, had the complete opposite reaction. She said something along the lines of: "Yuck. I’m so tired of all of these apology commercials."

I inquired more to why she had such strong feelings and she started to remind me of other commercials in the past where companies admit they’ve failed and say they’ll fix it. Her main example was GM after they received bailout money.

And the more I hear about Toyota’s past, I too start to question the sincerity of the commercial, too. Like many other automakers, Toyota denied any problems when consumers were first coming forward with complaints. And the company only gave in to recalls after insurmountable evidence and pending lawsuits. (At least that’s what NPR tells me). So really, Toyota is only sorry for getting caught and what they really want is to keep selling you cars.

So now, I’m a little torn. On one hand, when you make a mistake as an organization it think it’s good to be honest about what happened and do what you can to make it right. But can it work if you’ve be so blatant about trying to hide things in the past?

What are your thoughts? How is Toyota handling the crisis facing its brand? Is there anything different they could be doing or is this another case of you can’t please everyone?