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Winner:
Toyota has gone through some of the toughest marketing waters known to man: the court of angry and relentless public opinion.

But, folks, it’s the way a brand reacts that matters!

Beginning with the dignified and effective response of its top executive, Akio Toyoda, to a congressional panel several months ago in which he committed himself and his company to aggressively promoting safety, things have been turning around.

Bottom line, even if the sudden acceleration problems had proven to be 100% Toyota’s fault, their cars were still statistically very, very safe. Not only that, but the general consensus is that Toyota builds reliable vehicles.

Now, in a further vindication of Toyota, the U.S. Department of Transportation has done some preliminary research into those sudden acceleration accidents and has found that many were caused not by technical malfunctions but by driver error (something which Toyota was claiming early on but backed away from in the face of growing public anger).

Fact is, Toyota has done three marketing things absolutely right in the face of this worldwide brand crisis: 1) once it was clear that they had to apologize and promise to do better (despite the actual facts about their vehicles’ safety), they did so in an incredibly forceful and constructive way; 2) they continued being Toyota, a great company with a commitment to reliable and safe cars, and thus didn’t do anything else to mar their relationship with their customers (basically they let individual customer satisfaction bear the bulk of the marketing load) and 3) having put themselves in a sympathetic position to public opinion, as new facts favorable to them emerge, these facts have an even bigger impact on improving the company image (everyone feels sorry for the person or company that has been wrongly accused but has worked hard for redemption).

Sure, some analysts point to Toyota’s sales numbers in the new car market slipping behind not only GM but also Ford in 2010, but look at those figures again and you see that what really happened. GM and Ford expanded their market share by a couple percent (not a surprise in the current post-bailout climate); Toyota’s market share slipped but by little more than half a percent –not too bad in the face of a major public relations disaster.

Simply put, Toyota is positioned for a powerful brand recovery thanks to their decisive public response and the top to bottom marketing integrity of this great company.

Bonsai!

One other deserving mention under the winner column this week: Apple.
Like Toyota, they’re getting some bad press, but, folks, the key here is to focus on how they respond as a company. At first there was some waffling, but the Steve Jobs spoke decisively about just how they are going to fix the antenna problem on the iPhone telling the world that Apple is “working our butts off” in an around the clock effort that entails bringing cots into the engineering department. That’s responsiveness and that is great marketing!

Loser:

A few weeks ago, we looked at an error GM made when they tried to force a name change onto their employees and, ultimately, consumers. In that case, they wanted to have the more formal Chevrolet replace the popular Chevy.

That was a mistake and they were smart to backpedal.

Unfortunately, the YMCA is making a similar mistake but in the opposite direction. They are re-branding their organization more informally, shortening YMCA to the “Y”.

Fact is, people have been calling the YMCA the “Y” for years, so on the surface the change doesn’t seem like a big deal. But this name change is a mistake, because it’s unnecessary. A brand change should never be done simply because it can.

Bottom line, why eliminate YMCA? Coke has never done this with Coco Cola. There’s something valuable about keeping brand continuity with the past and by officially dumping it’s longer, formal name, YMCA is endangering that continuity.

Moreover, what exactly is this going to achieve? The old YMCA logo was already a big Y. Unfortunately, this looks like spin-the-wheels branding, the kind of knee-jerk updating of image that makes consultants feel good but does little for their clients.

And as if there weren’t enough reasons not to do this, why make the Village People unhappy (not to mention, doing away with free advertising every time their song YMCA is played)?

And, remember, things are always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.

TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY -
Rebranding should never be done just because it can be done.

John Tantillo is an AMA member and president of the Marketing Department of America, a New York-based marketing firm.
http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/