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| Toyota: Death by Twitter? |
 Earlier this year, Toyota recalled worldwide millions of its car models found to have an accelerator pedal problem. Toyota Motor Philippines said the recall didn’t affect models here in the country. In this article excerpted from The Big Money (www.thebigmoney.com), Matthew DeBord analyzes the role of social media in fueling the controversy. There is a lesson here to PR practitioners: social media is a potent tool, and strategic adjustments should be made in the way they handle similar problems. De Bord said that “what started as an embarrassing problem with floor mats and a theory that they were causing gas pedals to get stuck has led Toyota to initiate a worldwide recall of close to 10 million vehicles while simultaneously trying to salvage its reputation for quality, reliability and safety.”
A check of the #Toyota twitter tag showed that the tweet-rate was about a dozen tweets per 30 seconds. In 30 minutes there would be thousands more. DeBord observed that in such a situation, even “the most hardened PR warrior would have…wet his pants.” Had all this happened even just a decade ago, the problems would have been limited to a small geographic circle. Carmakers would be able to buy time to contain the damage even as their clients continued to drive the lemon cars. Now, with most people having Internet access and consumer advocacy reaching new, sharing the experience with thousands of other netizens is so much more easy—and fast. This was one reason the Toyota debacle, DeBord said, “achieved brushfire velocity and stunned a company…with the most loyal customer base arguably ever assembled by a carmaker.” Toyota had a couple of recalls in the last five years alone, while other carmakers such as Ford, Audi and General Motors were embroiled in arguably worse “brand-Armageddons.” Each time, different carmakers had different ways of dealing with the screwups, from pulling political strings to stonewalling. DeBord likened the latest in a long line of recalls to a heavyweight punch: the recipient reels from the blow but decides to carry on with the fight—unless he gets knocked out. In Toyota’s case, however, the problem wasn’t one big blow, but “death by a million tweets.”
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