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John Tantillo's Brand Loser... And Brand Loser: Toyota and Apple & the iPad
Posted by The Marketing Doctor at 2/2/2010 10:31 AM 
Categories: Branding
Tags: iPad marketing Tantillo Apple branding Toyota recall brand strategy Toyota
Categories: Branding
Tags: iPad marketing Tantillo Apple branding Toyota recall brand strategy Toyota
Brand Loser… | And Loser |
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John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week:
Loser: Toyota
Loser: Apple and iPad
Maybe it’s mid-winter blues, but I’ve decided to accentuate the negative by pulling a first: two losers. And, frankly, these two were such obvious marketing victims, I simply had to do it. They say that with pride there is a fall, and these two companies’ most recent debacles seem to prove the adage.
Loser Number One:
Toyota.
This car company was on the cusp of becoming the biggest and, arguably, the best worldwide.
But now Toyota is on the hook for one of the biggest recalls in automotive history, and its reputation for great quality at a great price is in tatters.
How did this happen? Well, I’ll leave the engineering post-mortem to the technical folks, but in my mind, this disaster underscores how marketing should never be seen as an after-the-fact part of business. Marketing is business. End of story.
The Toyota recall is a great example of how you can have a great brand (or brands), then make one mistake and watch it all go down the tubes.
Harry Truman used to say something along these lines: the President should be habitually uneasy. His point? Much responsibility rested on a president’s shoulders, and it would be wrong if a president didn’t sweat about these massive responsibilities and the possibility that a single slip-up could ruin everything.
Toyota, and any business for that matter, needs to remember Truman.
The design and production process must be scrutinized. Errors or potential errors must be minimized and, especially for a global company, the scope of any mishap must be compartmentalized (i.e., ten thousand recalls maybe, but not multi-continent, million plus recalls; a foot pedal problem in one car brand, not half of them).
People buy brands; they don’t buy companies…. But in Toyota’s case, things are not so clear-cut. With the exception of its branding master-stroke of Lexus, Toyota cross-labels every one of its car brands with its corporate brand.
The problem with this kind of corporate brand strategy? Well, when one product in the corporate line-up has a problem, so does the entire corporate brand and all of the individual brands under the corporate umbrella.
In this case: If one of Toyota’s car brands has a problem, it infects all of Toyota’s cars and its corporate image. This won’t happen —or be as grave— if Chevy has a recall (i.e., the Cadillac brand won’t be touched).
So what now?
Well, it’s crisis management time, and after they work their way through the recall, they need to look ahead with marketing in mind.
First, they ought to start unwinding this connection between their corporate brand and their individual car brands. Part of this process will be emphasizing the car brands that don’t have the foot pedal problem (i.e., Sienna, Solara, Yaris, 4Runner, FJ Cruiser, Land Cruiser, and the 2010 Prius).
How should Toyota handle the contamination? They need to create something like a Toyota Safety Program. For example, each car buyer will receive a card with the purchaser’s name on it and a booklet that outlines what Toyota will do for the safety of the driver and his/her family. There should be a 24-hour safety hotline that the new purchaser can call —and what about a free loaner car to be used by the owner during regular maintenance checkups?
In the face of all the negative, they need to emphasize the positive and remember that marketing begins with fundamental things like separating the individual car brands and putting quality control first.
Toyota must show that it is all about putting its customers first.
Loser Number Two:
What in the name of Newton is going on here?
Naming Apple as this week’s second loser is sad for me after I have trumpeted the virtues of this brand-based company so many times, but I have no choice…
I detect arrogance moving in, and arrogance is marketing poison. Arrogance leads to the kinds of mistakes that can only come from thinking that you know your customers better than they know themselves.
What do I mean by this?
Well, first, let’s get through the obvious iPad deficiencies, like its awkward (and possibly copyright-infringing) name and its lack of a camera. (How could they forget a camera with 500 million Skype subscribers worldwide and cameras in virtually everything, from cell phones to toasters?)
What I’m really concerned about is Flash video. Turns out that Apple has not made the iPad capable of supporting Adobe Flash video, which accounts for over 70% of all video content on the web.
Even Microsoft wouldn’t make this kind of mistake.
Obviously, the Apple consumers have told Apple simply by dint of the percentage of Flash video on the web that they want any new device to be Flash-enabled. Not making it so won’t make people abandon Flash; it will make them abandon the iPad.
The build-it-and-they-will-come strategy has never worked for any product. Real marketing dictates: build what they ask for, and they will come.
Still, I won’t sell Apple short. Hopefully, this is only a glitch and the arrogance displayed isn’t a permanent part of its corporate personality.
Next step for Apple? In the weeks ahead, Apple must listen to consumers and quickly march out updated versions of this product to meet the needs that are so clearly there.
Stay tuned.
And remember, things are always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY -
Arrogance is marketing poison.
For Toyota, I agree: the news has gotten worse all week.
But lots of folks disagree with you about Apple. This from ReadWriteWeb (http://tcrn.ch/16Koyy) for example. I noticed that analysts who have seen & used the iPad are even more impressed with it than others. And this report (http://bit.ly/bFKhrF) indicates clear positive trending re the iPad on Twitter.
From the standpoint of someone who develops for the web, we use Flash but are eager to move to HTML 5.0.
From the standpoint of a web content consumer, though, I view the lack of Flash on the iPad as an asset, frankly. I run a Flash blocker on my laptop so I get to choose what I experience--and what I don't. Most of what I want to consume I can consume without Flash and that will be increasingly the case for all of us.
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