When it comes to a crisis, everyone tends to fixate on the “bad press.”

I think it’s more revealing to zero in on the communications controlled by the offending company.

How are they telling their story within their control?

That’s why I find the Toyota open letters to customers so fascinating.

Just because you control the words doesn’t mean you get the story right.

Playing backseat driver, I’ve weighed in on three letters:

• Open Letter to Toyota Customers Hits Pothole
• Second Letter to Customers Stays on the Road
• Third Toyota Customer Letter Falls Flat

In aggregate, the letters haven’t been very good, which unfortunately also describes the fourth called “Our Commitment to Customers.”

The first line sets the tone:

History shows that great companies learn from their mistakes.

Gentlemen, I thought we established back in the letter No. 2 days that people don’t embrace history lessons when they’re worried about charging cars.

On the positive side, I like the idea that you’ve packaged three points for easy consumption.

On the not-so-good side, the points aren’t the right points.

First, we are fixing the vehicles covered by our recent recalls.

Talk about misreading the crowd. People kind of expect you to fix the malfunctioning vehicles.

But it’s the second point that illustrates how Toyota still views the crisis through an intellectual lens:

Toyota engineers have rigorously tested our solutions – and we are confident that no problems exist with the electronics in our vehicles.

• We’ve designed our electronic throttle control system with multiple fail-safe mechanisms to shut off or reduce engine power in the event of a system failure. And they work.
• But we’re not stopping there. We’ve asked a world-class engineering firm to conduct a comprehensive, independent analysis. Their interim report confirms that our fail-safe features work.
• Toyota will make the results of this comprehensive, independent evaluation available to the public when it is completed.

Again, we see gamesmanship with language that “no problems exist with the electronics,” meaning the rest of the car remains a wildcard.

Not good.

And you’ve got the electronic throttle control system to work, but you’re “not stopping there?” Given what’s transpired over the past few months, I would have to characterize this decision as wise but not exactly one that builds equity in the brand.

By the time you get to the third point about “transparency” you’ve lost the audience.

And the sign-off points back to Toyota’s heritage of building safe cars for 50 years.

Everyone knows Toyota has been cranking out safe cars at a good price forever. You don’t have to keep the reminders coming. Let the withdrawal from the karma bank happen naturally.

I do have one final suggestion for the Toyota gang -

Don’t write any more letters.

P.S. Quick reminder that we’re curating a “Toyota Crisis PR Resource” page which will be updated by the end of the week. If you have thoughts or content for the page, by all means send them my way.

Tiger takes center stage tomorrow to publicly share his mea culpa.

Every pundit and his brother has weighed in with a view. The local NBC affiliate was in our office today to interview our crisis guru John Radewagen.

So I’ll keep my view brief.

The statement on Tiger’s Web site doesn’t lead me to believe that tomorrow will have a happy ending:

Tiger Woods will be speaking to a small group of friends, colleagues and close associates at 11:00 a.m. EST on Friday at the TPC Sawgrass Clubhouse in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Tiger plans to discuss his past and his future, and he plans to apologize for his behavior.

It sounds like he’s hanging out with the guys over beers.

I also think it’s the wrong move to not field questions after he speaks.

Yes, I understand as articulated on his Web site that “Tiger feels that what happened is fundamentally a matter between him and his wife.” By not fielding questions he hopes to control the tawdry side of this ”little” crisis.

His quandary is that the more he strives to control tomorrow, the less likely he’s going to come across as sincere and truly apologetic.

Because a Q&A session forces Tiger to be Tiger.

You can’t script questions.

There is one move Tiger could make that would absolutely show remorse.

If he shared that he continues to need more time to focus on his family and, as a result, won’t be playing in the Master’s this year.

That would show the man’s serious about rehab.

There’s nothing more precious to Mr. Woods than winning more major titles than Jack Nicklaus.

If he was willing to give up a shot at the next major, the making of “Tiger, The Sequel” could begin.

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.

1 comment

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.