Toyota will survive in spite of PR foul-up

Recalls are nothing new to the motor industry. Virtually every brand in the world has had to face this sort of music from time to time. Why the Toyota recall seems so much worse is because Toyota is so much bigger. While others might recall thousands or even hundreds or thousands, Toyota has to do it in millions.

Doesn't worry them

Just looking at some fairly instant polling on the News24.com website, which isn't intended to be anything else but a rough guide to the way consumers feel, 63% said they wouldn't let this recall put them off buying a Toyota.

Now that's pretty positive.

But, 26% said it has put them off buying the brand, which, if that can be extrapolated in a global sense, is a lot of lost sales.

History, however, is full of determined people who swear they won't buy a brand when this sort of thing happens and then when it comes to the crunch and they have to start thinking with their wallets, they change their mind fairly quickly. My bet is that 63% will increase quite quickly over the next few weeks and months at about the same rate the 26% will decrease.

Brands don't die easily

If one looks back at brands and the effects of crises, it becomes immediately clear from myriad case histories that it is very, very difficult to kill a brand. SAA proves that every day.

But, something that this Toyota recall has shown up once again is how so many corporate PR departments are hopelessly unprepared for a crisis.

Worldwide, Toyota PR people dithered and dallied and eventually started saying the right things far too late. If they had been at least halfway efficient it would have reduced the number of people - that 26% - who said they wouldn't buy a Toyota now. The cost of dithering instead of doing, in this case, can be counted in millions of dollars in lost short-term sales

Head in the sand

In South Africa, Toyota's crisis communications effort followed a fairly typical local motor industry scenario which consists of putting heads in the sand for a few days hoping that, like swine flu, the problem would stay overseas and not come here.

Then, like most car manufactures in South Africa, Toyota went into state of denial and then eventually decided to start putting the fire out. Which was about as effective as trying to douse a rampant Australian bush fire by peeing on it.

Gibbons was not convinced

702/567 talk radio newsman, Chris Gibbons, put it in a nutshell after interviewing a Toyota South Africa PR type. He said that what he had been told hardly inspired him to want to buy a Toyota. Ouch.

I always find it quite remarkable that corporate PR departments never seem to bother to put together a crisis communication plan. They always seem to live in a dream world of everything going right all the time. And, when things do inevitably go wrong, they run around like headless chickens.

Planning for a crisis is as easy as pie to anyone who understands the basics of marketing.