The Big-make that the Detroit-Three just can’t catch a break. But Toyota, it seems, always manages to find the smoothest roads. Toyota produces the Prius, the hybrid car that has become the darling of the hip environmental set. It’s a car that has earned Toyota unbelievable mileage, both in fuel economy and PR. Rare is a magazine or newspaper article about climate change that doesn’t mention the Prius or show a photo of the somewhat bland-looking gasoline/electric powered hatchback version of the car.
Toyota might not have been the first to market with a hybrid vehicle, but it was certainly the first to recognize that an environmentally friendly car would generate big PR returns.
Back in Detroit, there’s GM. To great fanfare it released the Chevrolet Volt electric concept car at the North American Auto Show in January. The stylish sedan is powered by lithium ion batteries that GM claims can drive the car 40 miles, and it only needs to be plugged into a standard wall outlet to recharge.
Trouble is, GM can’t yet get the vehicle into production and it could be years before it does so. Why? Among other reasons, the batteries generate too much heat. As many automotive wags pointed out, GM has been down this road before. The makers of the film Who Killed the Electric Car? certainly believe so. The film tells the story of the EV 1, which GM built and then destroyed, claiming there was little demand for an environmentally friendly electric vehicle. Legions of the car’s fans, and the filmmakers, think otherwise.
So what was a small marketing win for GM has turned into a loss. And GM only has itself to blame for bursting its bubble. Even the tone of the coverage of the Volt’s unveiling was optimistic, suggesting the press was really hoping for a win this time.
Add to that the recent fallout over GM’s suicidal robot ad (which senior writer Rebecca Harris covers on p. 10) and the potentially disastrous results of a maybe/maybe not merger with Chrysler (another automaker caught out by high oil prices and fading consumer demand) and the black cloud grows bigger over Detroit.
Toyota, on the other hand, rarely gets any bad press and when it does, the negative vibes bounce right off. It made front page headlines when NASCAR driver Michael Waltrip was caught juicing up his Camry before the Daytona 500. Waltrip was fined, crew members were suspended, executives were embarrassed. Then, one of the closest finishes in race history all but erased the bad PR. Waltrip, incidentally finished the race in 30th. Toyota has also earned positive attention for the newly revamped Tundra pickup, its assault on the last morsel of the Detroit Three’s lunch.
As if sensing that aura of consumer and media goodwill, Toyota Canada recently unveiled a branding strategy based on the phrase “make things better.” The concept applies to all aspects of Toyota’s business, from technological innovation to customer service to environmental stewardship. It follows a year-long research project that included 36 focus groups and 2,367 online surveys across the country. Survey respondents associated Toyota with attributes such as leadership, innovation and environmental responsibility, and no longer saw the brand as “conservative,” a criticism-albeit a mild one-usually attributed to its products, i.e., safe, reliable but hardly sexy.
It’s a rare example of a company that can afford to pause, reflect and think about things like this, instead of lurching from one crisis to another. Does it, as The New York Times magazine recently suggested, make Toyota not just the best car company in the world but the best company? Maybe. But, what it does show is that Toyota can read the road map to the consumer better than just about anyone else.
