Toyota 2009-2010 Recall Case Study Crisis Communication

JMA 410 PR Strategies & Case Studies

Duquesne University

Diane Wuycheck

This study focuses on Toyota’s 2010 vehicle recall and their response to the crisis. Known as one of the most reliable and popular car brands, Toyota faced major scrutiny and negative reactions from the recall. The company recalled over 8.5 million vehicles due to sticky gas pedals and unintended accelerations, which lead to serious accidents and even, resulted in death. Used to having a good reputation, Toyota wasn’t used to this bad reputation and negatively and needed to come up with a plan to deal with the public and restore the brand.

The Japanese company had serious complication while creating the perfect method of communication because of the cultural differences between Japanese and American public relations. As time went on the public started to see the brand as untrustworthy and unsafe because of the quality and lack of information Toyota was releasing to the public.

Finally, Toyota began releasing information about the recalls, apologies and solutions on how they plan on fixing the problem. As the crisis started to relax, Toyota created safety campaigns and advertisements that proved their mission of safety and customer satisfaction. They connected with customers on another level through social media and survey communication and answered questions they had. Toyota had to change their targets with these new campaigns and focus on the big picture how the brand is perceived as a whole. Though their crisis control methods were not flawless, they worked through the problem and have rebuilt their reputation in the past six years.

Through the crisis Toyota used strategies like creating a new slogan, better technology and releasing new vehicles, which helped, resurface the brand and take heat off of the crisis. These strategies are seen still to this day and continue to benefit the company.

The crisis as a whole was learning experience for Toyota because they have never had a serious crisis before. They now have a plan for any future crisis or complication in any type of culture. The managers of the company have become better leaders and understand the importance of cross-cultural communication and are better prepared any issue that may arise. Toyota now is back to focusing on their main mission of safety and customer satisfaction.

        At the end of 2009, Toyota Motor Corp. was one of the top leaders in the auto industry.  However, within a few months, Toyota recalled over 8 million of their vehicles to address the serious issue of “unintended acceleration”, brake problems and “sticky gas pedals”.  National attention started focusing on Toyota on September 10, 2009 when a recording of a 911 call of a car crash in California, killing a police officer and his family, was released.  The crash was caused by “uncontrollable acceleration” and led to 3.9 million Toyota vehicles to be recalled on September 29, 2009 (Quelch et al, 2010).

        In early February 2010, 2.3 million vehicles were recalled for sticking accelerator pedals, which resulted in a suspension of eight models in North America, Europe and China.  The third recall was for brake problems on the company bestseller, Toyota Prius Hybrid.  The recalls totaled about 8 million vehicles worldwide in 2009-2010, with six million in the United States (Quelch et al, 2010).

        The Department of Transportation and the National Highway Transportation Safety Board (NHTSB) increased the investigation on Toyota after the large amount of recalls and conducted hearings in March 2010.  This was something Toyota was not used to because Toyota had a positive brand image before the recall and didn’t face a lot of scrutiny at the beginning of the crisis (Jones, 2010).  However, the responses from Toyota’s public relations team were considered poor and the public saw Toyota’s responses as insufficient.  The public, customers and future customers started to see the company as dishonest and untrustworthy.