How Toyota Used Social Media to "Digg" Itself Out of a PR Nightmare

In January 2010, Toyota had to recall its 2.3 million vehicles because of faulty accelerator pedals. Immediately Toyota was trending on Google and Twitter on a daily bases, negatively. Realizing the opportunity to reach out to the publics through social media during the time of crisis, Toyota's social media team, which was only a few months old at that time, decided to address the situation via Digg, http://digg.com/, which had outsize influence on Google News searches.

It proved to be a great move. Before in the 1980s, there was similar auto crisis happened on Auti who faced a gas accelerator recall. But now under the 24/7 scrutiny of social media, Toyota had to create a new way to get their message across.

On February 8, Toyota served up Jim Lentz, president of Toyota's North American sales operation, to the publics in the form of a Digg Dialogg. Lentz appeared on a dedicated video site, was interviewed and asked many questions from the publics.  Within two weeks, the Dialogg received 1.2 million views, and there were 3,200 questions. The Dialogg gave Toyota the appearence of achieving social media branding nirvana: Transparency. The survey by YouGov shows that Toyota hasn't completely recovered afterwards, but was in mostly good news.

Kimberley Gardiner, Toyota's national digital marketing and social media manager said, if the same thing happened today, she'd probably choose TweetChat on Twitter instead. In fact, Toyota has held several chats on Twitter later. It also uses Facebook, as a way to reach out to Toyota owners, while Twitter addresses those consumers who might be skeptical about the brand.

Now many celebrities and entities like to hold online chat and dialog with social media users, as a way to interact with targeted audience and be aware of the public opinions and questions. This is specially effective during a crisis, be accessible, be sincere and be willing to talk is a must in order to mitigate negative public relations.

Reference:
Wasserman, Todd. How Toyota Used Social Media to "Digg" itself Out of a PR Nightmare.