- Gregg S. Lipman

Just in case the lingering recession hasn’t scared you enough, consider this: Each year in America, there are nearly 30 million injuries—and 20,000 deaths—caused by consumer products. In the 38 years since Congress created the Consumer Product Safety Commission, there have been nearly a thousand recalls of defective products, which averages out to 26 recalls a year. In other words, there has been a recall of a consumer product in the United States every two weeks since 1972. Jeez.

I know what you’re thinking: The Great Toyota Recall we’re seeing right now is sure to inflate these stats even more. Actually, the CPSC has no jurisdiction over motor vehicles (that falls under the purview of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). However, that technicality notwithstanding, there’s no doubt that Toyota’s troubles will make the history books. But the enduring debate centers around a question many in the media are asking: Is this going to put Toyota into the crusher? My short answer: No, it won’t. But Toyota has another problem—a branding one—and this is something the media is not talking about.

Toyota’s been making vehicles since 1933. In 1997, its Camry became the best-selling car in the U.S. And by 2008, the company supplanted GM as the biggest car manufacturer in the world, piling up an impressive treasure chest of reliability and quality awards along the way. By all accounts, it was a stellar upward trajectory.

But then came the recalls (first, one termed “Floor Mat Entrapment” and, soon after, “Pedal”) and suddenly, as of mid-February, Toyota had yanked nearly 10 million vehicles off the road, suspended production at multiple plants and left 1,200 Toyota dealers with about 250,000 unsold vehicles worth billions of dollars. Since then, the doubts have echoed like backfires: “Is Toyota finished?” “Will this crisis kill the brand?” “How can Toyota possibly recover?”

That’s the situation. So... Is Toyota finished? In short, no, it’s not. Toyota’s been selling cars for 50 years in this country without any problems, and its Corolla remains the best-selling car in the history of the world. The company is sure to lose a little bit of market share, but the scale and magnitude of Toyota’s kind of business simply will not evaporate in three months. The company has also taken visible steps to fix the problems—both systemic and PR-related—following a template that corporate history has shown to be a reasonably successful crisis recovery strategy.

But there’s a longer-term, branding issue for the company. The singular axis around which the Toyota brand exists is purely one of function: Toyota cars are reliable, are low maintenance and perform consistently. That’s it. Check out the company’s mission statement: “to attract and maintain customers with high-valued products and services and the most satisfying ownership experience in America.” Yes, I know. I too fell out of my chair in astonishment. Then I took a nap.

That’s how soporifically bland Toyota’s mission statement is. It could be the mission statement for a company that makes vacuum cleaners. For contrast, check out Ford’s: “We are a global diverse family with a proud heritage, passionately committed to providing outstanding products and services.” Or Porsche’s: “The Porsche Principle is about a company that consistently goes its own way.” Daimler promises to “secure the mobility of tomorrow,” and BMW assures us it’s “the world’s leading provider of premium products and premium services for individual mobility.”

All of these mission statements reflect not only an implicitly functional position (i.e., reliability and quality) but also telegraph a unique emotional positioning as well. Audi even promises to “set new standards that define Vorsprung durch Technik”—which means “lead through technique” and sounds awesome when you say it out loud.

Toyota has been so successful as an automotive company that it never really had to explore this emotional component of its brand. It never defined an animating principle or a brand promise that could help it crystallize a more intimate, personal connection with its consumers.
Toyota as a business entity will come out of this recall with some painful scratches but nothing more. All the so-called experts arguing that this is a death blow to the brand are completely disingenuous at best or woefully mistaken at worst. In 1982, seven people died after taking Tylenol pills that had cyanide in them. Nike had unpaid children as young as 5 working in their factories. Both came out of those episodes just fine. It’ll take a lot more than faulty gas pedals to cripple Toyota.

However, if the company is not careful, it could find itself in a serious long-term branding predicament. Toyota needs to develop a character, a personality. To do that, the company needs a verbal and a visual toolbox that will enable it to communicate beyond the obvious, beyond the functional, and to build relationships with their customers. The company should identify a core emotional differentiator and refract it through the prism of heritage, song, affection, humor. Whatever it may be, Toyota needs to do it soon. In fact, right after fixing that “floor mat entrapment” would be a good time to start.


Gregg S. Lipman is managing partner at strategic branding company CBX. You can reach him at gregg@cbx.com or (212) 404-7980.