Social Media Wave- Social Media Marketing Agency

Toyota has some work to do after vulture legals swoop in on "lost resale value" of Toyota vehicles named in the suit. I would almost see that being just plain funny if there were a sanction which forced all Toyota owners to sell their vehicles today at any price- like a Toyota margin call.

Since this is not the case and the fact that most people would like to get home from work today, I think the entire premise of this suit is ridiculous. Toyota has come forward with a solution to fix the vehicles, so most will schedule their car in and have it fixed.

I have personally had similar issues with Ford (ECM failure which stopped the car's engine at highway speeds leaving me careening along in an automatic with no power brakes or steering) but they fixed it and I was happy. I had an Audi 4000 back in the day that had a Bosch relay fritz while on the 401 in Toronto that actually let the engine RPM climb to red line while in 5th gear...and then I had an Audi 5000s that had the "unitended acceleration issue" that the media melted down on in 1986- but I managed to get rid of that thing with some fancy dancing with the dealer and leasing company.

So how will Toyota fix their Trust issue going forward? This is a multi part dilemma but I think they need to get off the traditional, sanitized top down PR wagon and get with some social media strategies which will engage the current owner base with service offers and more good news like incentives to meet with the dealer. Dealerships are the brokers of of the brand for Toyota. They can make or break the reputation that they so badly need right now. Empowering the dealers to make everything right including trading in of vehicles by nervous customers may be in order.

After reviewing some media forums this morning it is pretty obvious that many of the hundreds of posts are by happy Toyota owners who would by the sounds of it- would buy one again. If Toyota can shake the wolves and keep the settlement money away from the lawyers, the can put it to work immediately.

The (Canadian market) example given was for 400,000 vehicles at an average of $1,000 per car owner as a settlement for the grand total of $400,000,000 dollars! That's a lot of balloons, hot dogs and dealer incentives to take the sting out of the relatively simple engineering and recall fixes!

Actually for $150,000 I would be glad to build Toyota a campaign that will turn a wolf pack into a cash cow.

UPDATE- Feb 8, 2010

Toyota has ramped up the dealer involvement by opening 24 hours in the US and providing fixes which are targeted at appeasing customer worries. If I were a customer and I wasn't injured or something terrible, I would consider this an honest willingness to rememdy the problems reported.

Would you still be considering joing a class action suit?

Me? No, I survived the Ford and Audi black clouds and continue to drive safely!

Craig Stark

Managing Director

Social Media Wave

@socialmediawave

Silly Video of Toyota Solara revving to 9,000 rpm