Whoa, what a feeling...Toyota! or: Unintended Brand Deceleration

The folks at Toyota HQ must be busier than a two-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs over this unintended-acceleration problem. They tried to sweep it under the proverbial floormat, until it happened to a guy who had the wherewithal to use neutral to enable him to drive his car to a dealership so they could see for themselves, the gas pedal was not being held down by anybody or anything. Take THAT, every service writer who's written "cannot duplicate problem".

Now, they’re pulling their painfully ironic ads about quality, and furiously getting busy with PR.

Good thing, too, because one TV ad in the "Portfolio" campaign smugly claims "Toyota has won more Total Quality Awards than any other automaker and we can all use little more quality these days”.



It took the better part of a decade for Audi to recover from the unintended-acceleration smear campaign against them started by 60 Minutes under the guise of “news”, and Toyota has had more than their share of recalls lately in the first place, including a 2009 recall of 100,000 Tundra pickups for premature rust problems that led to spare tires falling out of their mounts and onto roadways.

At the risk of being a candidate for the 2010 Duh! Awards, this is going to be really damaging, but just how damaging will depend on how forgiving the public will be, and on how far and how fast Toyota's management gets out in front of it. They're doing mostly the right things now about getting the mechanical problem fixed, but my sense is they're flubbing it in the court of public opinion. We're talking about a brand with equity worth at least $29 BILLION. That's a long way to fall and a long road back up.

Auto blog Jalopnik posted a nifty graphic showing the timeline of response to this issue, and it's kind of funny if you're into dark comedy.



This is Toyota we're talking about! Ask the average Joe or Jane about Toyota and they're likely to tell you the vehicles are unbreakable, they start every time, they help old ladies cross the street, and they spontaneously pull children out of house fires. This kind of thing is not supposed to come from Toyota.

Now, I’m a firm believer that floormats can be evil; in fact I still vividly recall having one hold the throttle wide open at the top of 2nd gear in my dad's mustang when I was a lad. I've been suspicious of them ever since, which is why you won't find them in the mustang I still drive today. So, toyota was right to be suspicious of them too. But was it that easy to blame the mats and call it a day?

Floor mats or throttle mechanism, it's egg on the face, and in a world where a car company can lose a lawsuit because it made a vehicle that failed to protect its occupants after they failed to wear seatbelts, Toyota may be dealing with more than just brand damage. After all, one man and his family died when the throttle on their Toyota-made Lexus stuck, and he didn't have the presence of mind to put the dang car in neutral. And you can bet the bushes are being beaten to find other terrified motorists who can attest to how their cars tried to kill them.

The defect is inexcusable, but here's the rub: Cars can't really overpower their own brakes. In fact, Car and Driver recently tested a Camry, an Infinity G37, and a 540-hp Roush Mustang to see how much longer it would take to stop a Toyota Camry when it was held at full throttle. The answer is: Not that much longer. In fact...the Camry only took 16 more feet to stop from 70 mph with the throttle wide open...and still stopped shorter than a Taurus can without a throttle problem.

Y'hear that? If this happens to you, stand on the brakes! Don't have the strength? Put it in neutral! Got the time? Turn the engine off! Just don't turn the ignition so far that the steering wheel locks. In any case, for God's sake, don't call 911 hoping they can help you with divine intervention as you hurtle through traffic.

And Toyota? For God's sake, put a credible executive up in front of the world and start managing this story before it manages your brand equity down a very large drain. The motoring public might actually forgive you, and fairly soon…but only if this is the very last recall of a Toyota product for a quality or safety problem in a very long time.

Taco Bell, a legitimate part of a healthy diet? Rally the lynch mob!

Everybody who doesn't live under a rock knows the story of Jared, the dude who lost 240 lbs on a diet consisting of exercise, and of eating nothing for lunch and dinner but Subway turkey and Subway veggie sandwiches. This guy sparked a ubiquitous TV campaign for Subway that's been largely heralded as a great success which helped propel Subway's image as a healthy, fresh place to eat fast food. Never mind the fact that not a single ingredient except the bread is actually prepared in-store.

Now, Taco Bell is trying to do a similar thing based on fan mail they've received about their "Fresco" menu. Just to clarify, customers who select an item "Fresco Style" are substituting Salsa for sour creams, creamy sauces, and cheeses. I discovered this nifty option myself when I was on a Weight Watchers program (lost 23 lbs in 10 weeks), and it really does make a difference. For instance, I happen to really like their Grilled Steak Soft Tacos, and I found that ordering them Fresco style eliminated 36% of their calories, 70% of their fat, and two of them left me with a yummy, quick, inexpensive meal. Each one was only 3 "points" in the Weight Watchers system, so two of them was only 6 points, which was less than 1/5th of my daily allowance of points. Anybody who's been on Weight Watchers will tell you, a meal that only costs 6 points is a big damn deal.

Now...would I make a diet around Taco Bell the way Jared did around Subway? No! But Taco Bell had flavorful, nutritious options that didn't cost me any guilt or lost dietary momentum.

Is Taco Bell trying to make a diet around Taco Bell? No! They're just trying to point out that they have a significant number of good menu items that are not counter to a reduced-calorie, reduced-fat diet. What's wrong with that?

Plenty, according to the red-eyed spittle-flinging Nutrition Nazis and Dietary Diatribers in the blogosphere, who are vilifying Taco Bell with claims that make it sound like the campaign, and indeed the very idea, are nothing less than preposterous, possibly illegal, most definitely immoral, and possibly terroristic.

So, OK. The ads don't represent ground-breaking creative, but I don't think that's why the backlash is happening. Make no mistake, Taco Bell may have a public relations challenge in the making. Is it a disconnect between the reality and the image of the brand? Reality being, yes, you can eat healthy there (and not just as a well-hidden single asterisk of an item on the menu) and the image being Mounds of Gooey Nachos When You're Drunk at 2 am?

What do you think?

And what do you think they should do about it?

Pizza Hut sells $1 million in pizza with apps...wait...what?

Pizza Hut has gotten a lot of press lately about how they've "generated" $1 million worth of pizza sales with their iPhone and Touch apps in the first 3 months they were available.

Sounds great! Sign me up, right? Well...hang on a second. Read the fine print, and you'll find that Pizza Hut grants its app users a 20% discount on every order. And I don't know for sure, but I'd hazard a guess that people motivated enough to download and use a pizza-ordering app were already in the brand fold. In other words, they were likely to be buying from Pizza Hut already. Only now, they're doing it for 20% less every time. I bet I could convince people to shackle a cannonball to their ankles if I promised them 20% off every one of their pizza orders, but do I have to cannibalize existing customers and throw my margin at them at the same time?

So my "Marketing, Directly" questions about this initiative are:

- How much of the $1 million in sales was incremental?
- How loyal are the users compared to those who purchase in other ways?
- Does this app improve profitability, and is it therefore a harbinger of operational shift to lower order-cost in the future?

If the answers to those questions are something along the lines of "lots", "more", and "yes", then I'd be willing to call it a success, but until then, maybe the success is tied more to the exposure it got just for doing the program.