Toyota embraces social media like YouTube
Toyota’s efforts to reconcile the recent recall debacle have been rather impersonal, coming in the form of future customer incentive programs like two years of free maintenance, offering zero-percent financing and low-priced leases to customers who buy or lease several of the recalled vehicles, but up until recently there has been no direct apology addressing their PR nightmare.
President and COO of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A, Jim Lentz recently apologized to Toyota customers via a YouTube video. “I want to sincerely apologize to Toyota owners, I know that our recalls have caused many of you concern and for that I am truly sorry, Toyota has always prided itself on building high quality durable cars that customers can depend on and I know that we’ve let you down.” The apology helps address concerns of anyone who purchased a Toyota from a Newark used Toyota dealer.
Lentz continues to express an understanding of the customers concerns offering extended hours at dealerships while some will remain open 24 hours a day. Lentz goes on to claim that they are re-doubling their efforts to ensure that this does not happen again. He doesn’t further define what “re-doubling their efforts” means, but you can tell from Lentz’s awkwardly “genuine” facial expressions Toyota does truly seem apologetic to the fact that they tarnished their wholesome image.
Used cars NJ dealerships, are probably wincing at the whole 24 hour promise, but Toyota does seem insistent on making up for their lack of dependence.
As social media and marketing tools like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter become more prominent in today’s business practices, the YouTube apology is not deemed any less effective or personal than that of a television advertisement. With commercial skippers like DVR and Tivo becoming more popular now than ever and websites like HULU, a YouTube video has just as much potential if not more to be seen on the internet than if aired on public or cable television. So far over 60,000 people have viewed the apology on YouTube.
Toyota has done a great job of accepting responsibility, empathizing with the customers and explaining to them what’s going to happen next and how they plan on making everything right again. With natural disasters plaguing the nightly news and Toyotas continuous clean-up campaign, Toyota hopes that their massive recall will become less and less newsworthy.
