When Bad Things Happen to a Good Company

Crisis communicators are pitching themselves as commentators today due to the big news from Japan. Toyota, one the world’s largest brands, is suffering its first big PR crisis all due to mangled communications. By issuing a recall on two-thirds of their inventory on the road without clearly informing their employees of talking points and the resolution process, Toyota has badly bruised their reputation.

The issue began last fall after an accident involving a sticky gas pedal killed a carload of passengers. Why didn’t they act sooner to solve the problem and then use transparent communications with employees and customers? It’s anyone’s guess.

The current crisis for this company will cost them in the hundreds of millions of dollars and that’s not to mention the loss in reputation. This has left sales teams scratching their heads, angry customers and embarrassed Toyota executives. There is one place that we know consumers are looking for information – the Toyota website. According to Alexa.com, traffic to the Toyota.com site has increased 20% in one day. Just three month ago it was down 3%.

The lesson in this?
• Solve problems as they happen
• Be transparent
• Coordinate both internal and external communications
• Pay close attention to your website information – it’s the front door to the company
• It may cost money to recall product, but reviving a brand is just as costly

HBR In Brief: Why Sustainability Is Now the Key Driver of Innovation

I picked this (and the PDF) up from Environmental Leader today. Worth a read as they give tips on implementation and theorize a process for corporate sustainability.

Key ideas from the Harvard Business Review article by Ram Nidumolu, C.K. Prahalad, and M.R. Rangaswami

The Idea in Brief

• Sustainability isn’t the burden on bottom lines that many executives believe it to be. In fact, becoming environment-friendly can lower your costs and increase your revenues. That’s why sustainability should be a touchstone for all innovation.

• In the future, only companies that make sustainability a goal will achieve competitive advantage. That means rethinking business models as well as products, technologies, and processes.

• Becoming sustainable is a five-stage process, and each stage has its own challenges. Here’s how to tackle them and emerge from the recession ahead of the pack.

Going Green for Permission Research

I recently stumbled across a Twitter thread concerning comScore, a leading digital audience measurement organization. This thread reminded me that I haven’t been to the comScore site in a while and they are practically my neighbors here in Northern Virginia. For those of you unfamiliar with comScore they provide the following factoids on their site that help give some perspective to what they do (and how they make money!):

· comScore is a leading source of data on mobile as well as PC-based Internet usage

· comScore data are truly global – the company tracks more than 3 million unique websites worldwide and the comScore panel includes consumers from 170 countries

It was wonderful to see a front page link for the corporate social responsibility (CSR) program, as CSR often gets buried in secondary pages. It appears as though comScore, “…has partnered with Trees for the Future to plant a tree for each new person who joins PermissionResearch (a division of comScore) through the comScore Trees for Knowledge campaign.”

Digging deeper into the PermissionResearch site, I realize they have a great CSR pitch and outline very specific, and appealing, member benefits. They have software downloads (free) that range from power management software to screensavers. Additionally, there is a points-based rewards program that is a catalogue of interesting consumer products which might appeal to the CSR demographic (i.e. tents – apparently we like the outdoors a lot).

What’s in all this for comScore? Engaged research panelists that likely fit a demographic that is attractive to their customers (opinion-elites) and why, yes, trees planted to offset our carbon footprint. Hats off to comScore for developing a program that wasn’t sent to the secondary or tertiary page dungeon, clearly outlines attractive benefits for participants and also serves to move their business forward. Well done.