Customer letter No. 3 from Toyota arrived on the scene today.

Like the previous two - analyzed in “Open Letter to Toyota Customers Hits Pothole” and “Toyota’s Second Letter to Customers Stays on the Road,” this letter was published in major dailies and on the company’s Web site.

Unfortunately, the third time was not a charm for Toyota.

The headline offers a promising start: “Toyota’s Pledge To You.”

But before going further, let me ask you a question. If someone says I’m making a pledge to you, what do you expect to follow?

Right.

You expect to learn about the actual content of this pledge.

Not Toyota.

Instead, the initial paragraph takes a drive down nostalgia lane:

More than 70 years ago, Toyota was founded with one mission in mind — to provide our customers with the safest, most reliable vehicles in the world. That’s why 80% of all Toyota cars and trucks sold in the United States over the last 20 years are still on the road today.

At least the second paragraph shows a modicum of empathy:

We’re proud of our heritage and recognize that, lately, we haven’t lived up to it. All 172,000 Toyota employees and dealership personnel in North America are working around the clock to make things right for you and earn back your trust.

But the core of the body copy, which consists of four bullet points under the subhead “Here’s what we are doing” really just rehashes customer service basics.

The third bullet in particular caught my attention:

When we learn about a problem our customers are experiencing, we’ll investigate without delay, and we’ll quickly address any safety issues we find.

For the second time in three posts, “Huh?”

Customers are supposed to be impressed that NOW you’re going to “quickly address any safety issues …”

I’m going out on the limb and predicting this “magnanimous” gesture is not going to win a whole lot of goodwill.

Even with Toyota’s volume discount, the ads in The Wall Street Journal alone are running around $200K a pop. It’s baffling with so much on the line they can’t get the narrative right.

Yet, take a look at how the letter closes:

And we believe that the best companies learn from their mistakes. We know we need to do better. We are committed to doing just that.

Bravo.

This is how the letter should have started, not ended.

P.S. We took a shot at building and curating a “Toyota Crisis PR Resource” page. If you have thoughts or content for the page, by all means send them my way.

I skewered Toyota earlier in the week in the post “Open Letter to Toyota Customers Hits Pothole.”

Instead of addressing the issue head on, Toyota started the letter harking back to its 50-year heritage.

The narrative went downhill from there.

I don’t think Toyota was particularly proud of the letter either given it’s no longer on the web site (although it does show up in the image library).

I’m convinced every crisis reaches a fork in the road in which a company must make a choice on who’s leading the charge, legal or common sense.

It was clear from scrutinizing Toyota’s Open Letter that legal had won the tug of war and I expected legal would set the tone for what remains of the debacle.

So it was with utter surprise that I read the latest Toyota letter again running in major dailies like the Wall Street Journal and USA Today as well as on their web site.

It shows, dare I say, common sense.

I’m sure Toyota didn’t dump the attorneys but all of the sudden common sense appears to have the final say.

For starters, they didn’t title the piece “A Second Open Letter to Customers.”

Instead, they get right down to business in plain language with the 84-point headline:

“There’s been a lot of talk about the recall. Here are the facts for our customers”

Straight forward and the line “Here are the facts for our customers” is much stronger than the typical default “Here are the facts.”

The body copy kicks off with the same no-nonsense tone:

Over the past few days, there has been a lot of speculation about the sticking accelerator pedal recall. Our message to Toyota customers is this – if you are not experiencing any issues with your accelerator pedal, we are confident that your vehicle is safe to drive.

Toyota has recognized the drivers with the problem might be a lost cause. Instead, their primary focus has shifted to the “99 percent” with cars still humming along.

Of course, the drivers in the clear still need to see Toyota take accountability for the problem.

I like the fact that Toyota got rid of the silly language. A phrase such as “a convenient appointment” now simply appears as “an appointment”

There’s also a certain crispness that was missing in the first letter; i.e., “dealerships have extended their hours” instead of the lame “many of our dealers will be working extended hours.”

And the superfluous pontificating – lines like “Some of the actions we’ve taken are unprecedented” – has completely disappeared.

It’s not nearly as much fun critiquing effective writing but Toyota deserves credit for course correcting their communications.

Let’s see if common sense remains in the driver’s seat (tough to resist those car metaphors).

Side note: Toyota assigned the same URL of the first letter (http://www.toyota.com/recall/ToyotaCustomerLetter.pdf) to the second letter. The beauty of this maneuver is it essentially wipes out the virtual trail of the original offending copy.

It’s standard practice for journalists to put a “face” on a crisis.

It’s called humanizing the story.

Which brings me back to the Toyota debacle which I addressed yesterday in the post “Open Letter to Toyota Customers Hits Pothole.”

As you would expect, the reporters crafting follow-on stories to the Toyota crisis are indeed striving to put a “face” on their stories.

Nothing unusual there.

Between working the phones, knowing someone at a Toyota dealership or hanging out next to Toyotas in a Safeway parking lot, there are a myriad of ways to find these sources.

But the approach by Clifford Krauss from the New York Times caught my attention.

It appears that Mr. Krauss opened a Twitter account with the sole objective of connecting with disenchanted Toyota customers. My search for another account which included the New York Time Muck Rack page turned up nada.

You can see his 17 tweets below (yes that’s me at #9 showing up on his radar from yesterday’s post):

Nice personal touch with the “Cliff” sign off that accompanies most of the tweets.

To Cliff’s credit, he clearly identifies himself as a NYT reporter.

Plus, Twitter is increasingly used by business people of all types, not just reporters, to suss out new contacts.

In fact, one could argue that Cliff’s use of Twitter actually fits the spirit of the founding fathers.

After all, he’s just asking people “what are you doing … and would you like to talk to me about Toyota’s faulty gas pedal that unexpectedly accelerates the vehicle.”

I welcome hearing your perspective.

You know the Toyota debacle has reached a new low when it snares Steve Wozniak.

And Woz’s issue isn’t even with the sticking gas pedal (the darn cruise control was malfunctioning).

I think it’s fair to say the timing for this celebrity endorsement isn’t ideal.

To ensure the “we-care” message reaches the masses, Toyota crafted a letter to customers that ran in major dailies and its Web site. After watching Bridgestone/Firestone take a public flogging years ago when management took the denial path, Toyota decided to address the issue head on.

So far so good.

But the who the hell is writing this stuff?

Let’s break down the content starting with the opening line:

For more than 50 years, Toyota has provided you with safe, reliable, quality vehicles and first-rate service.

Hmmm.

You’ve just issued a recall that impacts more than 2 million cars and freaked out a subset of drivers who prefer to be the one deciding when gas feeds the engine, and you’re leading with heritage and adjectives.

The second line can only be described as Clintonesque:

I am truly sorry for the concern our recalls have caused, and want you to know we’re doing everything we can – as fast as we can – to make things right.

Notice that Toyota stays away from apologizing for an accelerator that seems to have a mind of its own. Instead, they’re sorry — no, make that “truly sorry” — that they caused heartburn from implementing the recall.

This type of language gamesmanship causes the customer to check out before getting to the part that matters– that Toyota is going “to make things right.”

Moving along:

We’re writing to all customers affected by the Pedal recall, as well as the Floor Mat recall, to let them know how to schedule a convenient appointment with their local dealer.

That’s big of you.

Then we learn of immense sacrifice:

We’ve temporarily halted production of these models to focus fully on fixing this problem in the vehicles that are on the road.

I don’t think customers will be impressed that you concluded all resources should be directed at solving the crisis before your brand is permanently tarnished.

As the letter comes down the home stretch, one would logically expect an empathetic close. Instead, we’re treated to a lesson in Auto Management 101:

Stopping production is never an easy decision – but we’re confident it’s the right thing to do for our customers.

Fellas, you are the largest car maker in the world. You’ve stockpiled over $25B in cash on the balance sheet. I don’t think you’re going to find customers feeling guilty that you had to temporarily halt the assembly line.

How can the best intentions go so wrong?

It’s possibly a case of copywriting by committee with legal chairing the effort.

In my crisis experiences, there’s often a tug of war between the approval process and common sense.

In the case of the Toyota letter, the approval process won out.

The Wall Street Journal recently kicked off an advertising campaign.

An anchor ad caught my attention, which you can see below (note we took liberties with the typeface to improve legibility of the scan).

View a larger version here.

Notice anything about the body copy?

There’s no mention of the “B” word.

Maybe they expect the reader to conclude that The Wall Street Journal means business because the photo depicts a guy in a suit reading the paper. (BTW, what kind of business person stands on a sidewalk, leans against a wall and enjoys a “relaxing” perusal of a newspaper?)

But there’s nary a mention of business in the body copy.

Instead, the ad makes a pitch for the paper’s analysis and fresh perspectives that “enable you to make the right choices for your”:

* Family

* Career

* Life

Let’s take these one at a time.

Family encapsulates aspects ranging from buying a home to making sure junior gets into the right college.

I associate career with one’s personal ambition.

And I would say life covers enjoyment and health as the two macro umbrellas.

Step back for a moment and consider the process behind developing and writing this ad.

I guarantee the paper’s management team was involved every step of the way in scrutinizing, debating and finally deciding on the final words. Given Mr. Murdoch’s hands-on approach, it’s within the realm of possibilities that he played copywriter for a day.

The point is, reverse-engineering the ad offers a glimpse into the future of The Journal.

Clearly, the entertainment quotient in the paper will continue to be dialed up as it strives to appeal to a broader audience than the pre-Murdoch product. It’s not a coincidence that the Journal ad inserted into this post was taken from Sports Illustrated.