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Media World
07 March 2010 By Catherine O'Mahony
I am fascinated by the phenomenon that is Toyota.
There is a worldwide recall of millions of cars, and thousands of Irish car owners are trekking back to the dealers for repairs.
It is a depressed market for cars anyway, and there are loads of deals to be had elsewhere. The rules of logic would dictate that consumers should be running scared from Toyota.
But what actually happened? Nobody cared.
Toyota was the most sought-after brand during February, the best month for car sales in this country in a considerable time.
How can this be? Why – amid efforts by carmakers to get attention for scrappage deals and extended warranties – did most Irish people still gravitate to Toyota?
To me, the only possible explanation is that all those years of hearing that Toyota makes the ‘‘best-built cars in the world’’ (this, by the way, is a slogan unique to Ireland, though Toyota backs it up with US research) has seeped so far into the nation’s psyche that no number of accelerator pedal faults can dislodge it.
This is a spectacular result for Toyota’s marketing machine. Reports from the US also suggest that Toyota has made gains in social media due to the crisis.
Advertising Age last week ran an interview with Doug Frisbie, Toyota’s US national social media and marketing integration manager. He claimed that the carmaker had actually grown its Facebook fan base by more than 10 per cent since late January.
Prior to the recall, Toyota didn’t have a reputation as an aggressive social-media adopter, but it has since become a far more active user on Twitter as it tries to engage with customers and respond to complaints.
This kind of approach has been evident in Ireland too, where Toyota is tweeting more or less daily, largely about the recall.
‘‘We certainly have learned a tonne," said Frisbie. ‘‘Those learnings – like creating a social media response team and opening multiple platforms where we can communicate directly with customers – will be part of our strategy going forward. And, eventually, those things will give us an advantage."
Looks like – in this market, in any case – Toyota still has it
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