There’s nothing like a crisis to keep you on your toes when you work in PR, and the people at the Toyota press office must have been putting the hours in over the past couple of months after the company was forced to recall 2.3 million vehicles due to a faulty accelerator.It’s now beginning to emerge that in the days leading up to the recall back in January (there had been others in September 2009 for a similar problem), Toyota executives debated when they should let the public know about the safety problems.
At the time group vice president for environment and public affairs Irv Miller – who has now retired from the company – said in a email to colleagues: “We are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet. The time to hide on this one is over. We need to come clean.”
Since then Toyota has gone on record as saying: “We have publicly acknowledged on several occasions that the company did a poor job of communicating during the period preceding our recent recalls.”
Interestingly, here in the UK over the past month the company has undertaken a couple of ad campaigns, the first telling customers that their cars are now safe to drive; and the more recent letting everyone know that Toyota cars now come with a five-year warranty or three-years’ free servicing. And all with a soft Scottish burr to give the ads a warm, trusting feel.
Toyota has used a classic crisis management tactic; let the dust settle, and then come out with all guns blazing.
Remember Bernard Matthews and the outbreak of bird flu in 2007? The Norfolk-based turkey farmer co-operated fully with the subsequent Defra investigation, while keeping as low a profile as possible for a few weeks before emerging with a huge ad campaign.
Although the outbreak lost the company around £20 million in sales and costs, by keeping up its marketing it has since returned to profit. Surely evidence that marketing and PR works?
And here’s a few other not-too-distant PR gaffs:
BT chairman Sir Michael Rake received a 1Mbps broadband connection to his home after moving to a “not spot” in Oxfordshire a year previously. However, his neighbours were not afforded the same privilege because he was helping trial it.
BT did offer one resident an alternative, though, except they’d have to pay £68,000 to have their home hooked up.
Prince Harry is pictured in The Sun newspaper wearing a swastika armband at a friend’s colonial and native party.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the picture of the 20-year-old also showed him not only holding a drink but a cigarette as well.
Former RBS chairman Sir Fred Goodwin hangs on to his taxpayer-funded £693,000 a year pension.
Eventually he was persuaded to accept a smaller pension, but only after he’d been given a £2.7 million tax-free lump sum from the pension fund.
