The following was written by Joe Cohen, whom some of you may remember having been a reporter at The Courant. Since getting fired from there – some of the best people get canned at newspapers 
– Joe has worked in the Chicago trading pits and has had major PR jobs for companies like Merrill Lynch. He wrote the following piece for us about how Toyota got itself in the mess its in. I am hoping to convince Joe to become a regular blogger for us. He has expertise in many areas and is a good friend. He is now taking care of his elderly mother in Chicago, but still has land in Ct with a stunning view of the Connecticut River – where is considering settling and building a home.
By Joe Cohen
Car sales, lies and media: How Toyota drove itself into a public relations crisis
Every business, organization and individual has a story to tell. Often the stories can be told a number of different ways. That has become obvious as Toyota Motor Sales USA and its Japanese parent struggle through the auto maker’s quality/safety crisis and related “public relations crisis†– one in which the company seems to tell a version of its story nearly every day while contradictory information keeps surfacing.
As someone who has worked in media and corporate communications, I am astounded this company – which had spent decades and billions of dollars building a sterling reputation for quality – now finds itself in a public relations crisis and in need of crisis communications and government relations consultants.
Beyond the issues of quality, safety engineering and manufacturing, Toyota also got into a media pickle. Fixing its image will take time, substantive changes in how it does business and in how it communicates both internally and externally. Obviously, the design, engineering and manufacturing issues Toyota must deal with take first priority – but protecting its brand also is vital to its future.
Hiring crisis communications and public affairs experts in New York, Washington and elsewhere and placing full-page advertisements in newspapers is all well and good. But reactive moves likely do not get at the root of the communications aspect of the problem: Toyota’s internal communications and public affairs function was either not appreciated, not properly used or was just plain broken.
The unintended acceleration and other safety and quality problems that have recently garnered so much negative media attention for Toyota are not new. In fact, reports of these problems with Toyota cars and trucks have been circulating on the Internet for years. Recent news reports confirmed that at least one insurance company and one federal safety agency had raised the problems with the company.
What is unfortunate for Toyota and its dependents – customers, employees, dealers, shareholders and business partners – is that if Toyota had run its communications and public affairs function as an information gathering as well as a marketing/advertising/public relations unit, it might have avoided most, if not all, of its current disaster.
Clearly, recognition of problems and being forthright and thorough in addressing them has not been at the forefront of Toyota’s culture. Weeks into the height of the crisis, Toyota spokespeople were still making public statements about the situation not being dire – specifically, not rising to the level of a “crisis.†If not a crisis, how does Toyota explain hiring top gun “crisis communications†practitioners in New York and Washington at fees running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars a month? Toyota’s actions – misstatements, half truths and mischaracterizations – have set it up as a case study in what not to do when it comes to crisis communications.
What many organizations and individuals – even sophisticated ones ranging from Toyota to public figures (Tiger Woods, Gov. Mark Sanford come to mind) – fail to focus on when seriously bad news hits, is where they have been and where they want to go. There are typically three key potential opportunities in crisis communications: To avoid, to minimize and to resolve.
Avoiding a communications crisis by not ignoring it, but focusing on it, should always be the first choice and is always the best option. That sounds simple, but it means running an organization’s communications and public affairs function – which is overhead, not revenue producing – as an equal, trusted partner to functions that are revenue producers such as manufacturing, marketing and sales.
Often, organizations find one of the most difficult obstacles to avoiding a crisis is facing the harsh, negative facts head-on – including being forced to drill deep for the truth, when necessary. Successfully avoiding a crisis also requires telling the truth to management. Yet communications and public affairs workers know the danger of telling their bosses the truth, and too often “job preservation is job one.†Also, while getting the facts and presenting them to management is an important role for a successful communications and public affairs function, that function also must be a respected and trusted part of the organization so that the information is acted on.
Timeliness is another critical component, especially in today’s 24×7 wired world where anything potentially damaging to an organization can be posted on the Internet and can have fast, far-ranging and lasting effects.
That raises another potential obstacle: If management is made aware of the facts and then wants to “spin†or otherwise not be truthful, it is the responsibility of communications and public affairs professionals (and others, such as legal counsel) to insist that the truth – while potentially bringing short-term pain – is relied on for the longer-term best interests of that organization.
Too often, however, getting to the facts and telling the truth is not done, or it is fudged. As a result, the public and media do not trust organizations – especially businesses. It is why the terms “corporate flack,†“mouthpiece,†“p.r.†and “spin†are often used derisively.
Getting the facts, making informed, intelligent decisions and basing every subsequent action on being truthful is at the core of avoiding a communications and public relations crisis. It also is at the core of minimizing damage, and ultimately resolving the crisis.
Avoid, minimize, resolve – it seems so simple. But Toyota finds itself in serious trouble over something it should have recognized early on, dealt with and already resolved. This Toyota corporate wreck could have been avoided if Toyota had simply paid attention to the information that was out there, gathered it up, processed it and acted on it – being truthful and responding quickly all along.
Instead, Toyota’s long-time, carefully-crafted reputation for quality and integrity has been driven into a ditch, will require expensive and painful emergency rescue and repair, and may never again have an untarnished aura to it.
Because let’s be honest: Most educated consumers do not want to buy a car from a car company that has been driven off the road, colliding with facts and truth – especially those that involve safety and reliability.
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