What's Japanese for oops?

So of course, Toyota has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons.  This whole thing has made me a little sad, because I am a Toyota owner and I love my car.  I haven't been a fan of their crisis management however.  They've dropped the ball- keeping secrets, taking too long to respond, not seeming apologetic etc.

I remember in the first few days after the news hit, I saw an advertisement by a bunch of dealers in some American city.  It didn't acknowledge the problem and it flaunted Toyota's safety record as a selling point.  Not the correct strategy.  There was even a Toyota product placement in an episode of Bones that week.  It was a little desperate, and clearly slipped in at the last moment.

This week I finally saw something from Toyota that made me happy.  It was another ad, but this one acknowledged the problems, and acknowledged that the company is going to have to earn the trust of the public back. It was completely on-message in terms of crisis communications.



Toyota will bounce back from this.  It will probably take some time. Hopefully they've learned some lessons from the whole ordeal.  Transparency is the key to trust, and the three rules of crisis communication are: tell the truth, tell it first and tell it all.