It seems like everyone is talking about the quality problems and subsequent fall from grace at Toyota. The most startling, to me, is when someone casually says, “Well, you just know that they’re going to find an email that proves that they knew something was up before they announced it.”
It’s a discussion that follows nearly every major product defect or recall announcement. But discovering that a company knew something prior to an announcement is not in itself a smoking gun. The announcement that you hear on the news is far down a chain of events that is part of a much larger process. I’ve been part of enough crisis communications teams to know that while internal investigations start with the first complaint, they don’t begin to escalate to the level of recalls and public apologies until long after a pattern has been established.
This isn’t a case of the Evil, Faceless Corporation trying to hide problems and harm you. It’s about trying to establish the extent of the problem and develop a remediation plan. If, for example, it turned out that the Toyota sudden acceleration problem was isolated to only a certain lot of parts from a particular supplier, that could easily be remedied through a letter to the affected customers. But when a company announces a blanket recall, it not only has to be sure that the problem is widespread, but it also has to have a plan for repairs and an adequate supply of parts to handle the job. This isn’t something that can be implemented overnight.
The idea that a company should speak up immediately is maddening, and often wrong. For some reason, all of PR punditry seems to be reduced to the idea that if you speak up early, people will move on and forget. Speaking without a proper crisis plan in place can actually do more harm than good, potentially ruining the brand forever.
When corporations evaluate a crisis, they’re looking at it in terms of logistics: parts, service and schedules. How can they make it right without making it worse? When customers evaluate the same crisis, they’re looking at it in emotional terms: fear, safety and children. Am I safe? Is my family safe? And how are you going to fix it?
The lore of the 1982 Tylenol scandal — the story that J&J pulled all Tylenol from the shelves within 24 hours after reports of poisoning — is upheld as the gold standard of all crisis response. Yet it was actually a full seven days between the first cyanide death (September 29) and the recall announcement on October 5.
Even so, seven days is still a quick response. Compared to Toyota, the Tylenol recall was an easy one: ask customers to throw away all Tylenol products. Replacement parts and repair plans weren’t necessary. Cars are not so easy. Add to this the added modern public relations complication of social media — vitriol spreading like wildfire — and Toyota is in an even tougher position.
Only time will tell how the brand withstands this crisis, and only hindsight will reveal who knew what and when. Regardless of what that investigation reveals, only a careful, reasoned response and a comprehensive remediation plan will help the crisis to pass as quickly as possible.