PR 101

NBC demonstrated to me Sunday night that they are tone deaf when it comes to social media. Which means they are tone deaf when it comes to listening to their viewers. That’s dangerous. They should ask United Airlines or Proctor & Gamble what happens when you ignore people who use social media.

If you were watching the Olympics Sunday, you saw what I thought was a pretty good closing ceremony. If you lived anywhere other than the United States, you got to see the ceremony straight through without interruption. If you were unlucky enough to be watching the NBC television network, your Olympic viewing was interrupted by an insipid reality show called “The Marriage Ref,” and local news. In all, there was about an hour break in the viewing. For those living in the eastern time zone of the U.S., that meant they had to stay up until 1 a.m. to see the entire ceremony.

As one who closely monitors social media, I can tell you the Twittersphere was alive with complaints. I have no idea how many, but I can you there were thousands judging by how fast the hashtags #NBC and #NBCFail kept updating. And the anger wasn’t just over the decision to cut off the Olympics; it was also over the decision to bring Jay Leno back to the Tonight Show.

Here’s a sample of the tweets going out on #NBCFail:

• wtfgerard: RT @nNoela: NBC is continuing their Winter Olympics coverage with a new downhill event. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. #imwithcoco #nbcfail I give this tweeter credit for combining his anger on two events into one tweet.
• disappointedme: BOYCOTT LENO and his Olympic killing network. #TeamCoco #imstillwithcoco #NBCFAIL #RIKSHAZ9LIRK #SuckitNBC As a note: the hashtags “I’mwithcoco (Conan O’Brien) was the third most popular topic on Twitter Monday. That’s quite an accomplishment considering there are an estimated 50 million tweets a day.
• MONTANAinAZ: RT @ColorMeRed: Just to thank NBC for their exceptional coverage (sarc) of the Winter Olympics, my TV will be reprogrammed to everything but NBC #NBCfail This was a particularly popular tweet. I saw it at least a dozen times.
• lvnTrey: RT @ChefMark: Although sad that the Olympics is over, I’m happy that NBC’s reign of tyranny on my set is over! #NBCFail. Oh, and #shutupCostas

You get the idea. There was a lot of anger. And a lot of calls for boycotting NBC. The anger went viral pretty quickly. As I write this on Tuesday, it is still going on. If anything, the flames are burning brighter.

What surprised me is that I never saw any response from NBC to all of this. They did apparently use an application called TwitterFeed to send out positive sounding tweets about “The Marriage Ref.” TwitterFeed is an app in which you enter a bunch of tweets at one time and then schedule them to be sent out over whatever time period you want. Judging by the tweets, I would say someone decided to send a tweet about every 10 minutes.  You can often tell someone has done this because the tweets tend to be phrased alike. They stopped when several people called NBC on it.

Doing that is a violation of one of my social media rules: don’t ever pretend to be something you are not. The social media universe hates lying. And, it destroys credibility.

Getting back to my main point, I am shocked frankly that the once proud Peacock Network did nothing to calm down angry viewers. NBC is in fourth place in a four-network race. They cannot afford to do something like this. This is not 15 years ago. Social media keeps things alive.

In NBC’s position, they cannot alienate their stakeholders. Those viewers have other choices. Fox, CBS, ABC and the hundreds of cable channels will all benefit from NBC’s decision not to engage with its viewers. It doesn’t appear NBC understands that. It’s sad.

NBC demonstrated to me Sunday night that they are tone deaf when it comes to social media. Which means they are tone deaf when it comes to listening to their viewers. That’s dangerous. They should ask United Airlines or Proctor & Gamble what happens when you ignore people who use social media.

If you were watching the Olympics Sunday, you saw what I thought was a pretty good closing ceremony. If you lived anywhere other than the United States, you got to see the ceremony straight through without interruption. If you were unlucky enough to be watching the NBC television network, your Olympic viewing was interrupted by an insipid reality show called “The Marriage Ref,” and local news. In all, there was about an hour break in the viewing. For those living in the eastern time zone of the U.S., that meant they had to stay up until 1 a.m. to see the entire ceremony.

As one who closely monitors social media, I can tell you the Twittersphere was alive with complaints. I have no idea how many, but I can you there were thousands judging by how fast the hashtags #NBC and #NBCFail kept updating. And the anger wasn’t just over the decision to cut off the Olympics; it was also over the decision to bring Jay Leno back to the Tonight Show.

Here’s a sample of the tweets going out on #NBCFail:

• wtfgerard: RT @nNoela: NBC is continuing their Winter Olympics coverage with a new downhill event. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. #imwithcoco #nbcfail I give this tweeter credit for combining his anger on two events into one tweet.
• disappointedme: BOYCOTT LENO and his Olympic killing network. #TeamCoco #imstillwithcoco #NBCFAIL #RIKSHAZ9LIRK #SuckitNBC As a note: the hashtags “I’mwithcoco (Conan O’Brien) was the third most popular topic on Twitter Monday. That’s quite an accomplishment considering there are an estimated 50 million tweets a day.
• MONTANAinAZ: RT @ColorMeRed: Just to thank NBC for their exceptional coverage (sarc) of the Winter Olympics, my TV will be reprogrammed to everything but NBC #NBCfail This was a particularly popular tweet. I saw it at least a dozen times.
• lvnTrey: RT @ChefMark: Although sad that the Olympics is over, I’m happy that NBC’s reign of tyranny on my set is over! #NBCFail. Oh, and #shutupCostas

You get the idea. There was a lot of anger. And a lot of calls for boycotting NBC. The anger went viral pretty quickly. As I write this on Tuesday, it is still going on. If anything, the flames are burning brighter.

What surprised me is that I never saw any response from NBC to all of this. They did apparently use an application called TwitterFeed to send out positive sounding tweets about “The Marriage Ref.” TwitterFeed is an app in which you enter a bunch of tweets at one time and then schedule them to be sent out over whatever time period you want. Judging by the tweets, I would say someone decided to send a tweet about every 10 minutes.  You can often tell someone has done this because the tweets tend to be phrased alike. They stopped when several people called NBC on it.

Doing that is a violation of one of my social media rules: don’t ever pretend to be something you are not. The social media universe hates lying. And, it destroys credibility.

Getting back to my main point, I am shocked frankly that the once proud Peacock Network did nothing to calm down angry viewers. NBC is fourth place in a four-network race. They cannot afford to do something like this. This is not 15 years ago. Social media keeps things alive.

In NBC’s position, they cannot alienate their stakeholders. Those viewers have other choices. Fox, CBS, ABC and the hundreds of cable channels will all benefit from NBC’s decision not to engage with its viewers. It doesn’t appear NBC understands that. It’s sad.

Last Wednesday, I said Toyota was slow out of the blocks to respond to the various crises it has faced of late. I think I was blogger 10,143 to state the obvious. However, I also said the company is showing signs of regaining its equilibrium.

Note: I drive a 2000 Camry. Both my children drive Corollas.

The company is running ads in every print and broadcast outlet it can find – including a lot of radio. It has shown pictures of its idled factories to demonstrate how serious it is in identifying the accelerator and brake issues. It also has a very active presence on Facebook.

Still while this is a good start, I think the company could do more. I think they if they handled it as I suggest, they would turn a negative into a positive.

Do What Datsun Did

The first thing Toyota’s C-Suite executives should do is plan road trips to every dealer in every country where Toyota is sold. The road trippers should be Chairman Fujio Cho, Vice Chairmen of the Board Katsuaki Watanabe and Kazuo Okamo, President Akio Toyoda, and in North America, Jim Lentz, president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Sales, USA. If there are people who hold the same positions as Lenz in Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africa, they should also pack their bags.

They need to take a page from the handbook of retired Nissan executive Yutaka Katayama.  It was Katayama who made Datsun (which later returned to its original name of Nissan) into the first Japanese automobile success story in the United States, according to the late journalist and author David Halberstam. It was Halberstam who detailed Datsun’s success in “The Reckoning” – his account of the rise the Japanese auto industry.

Katayama lived in the United States. He traveled constantly around the U.S., meeting, customers, dealers, reporters and anyone else who talk to him. Halberstam explained that Katayama made Datsun a powerhouse because “he (Katayama) was a rare man. He brought a face to the Japanese mercantile presence; meeting him, Americans felt they knew, understood and liked the Japan that was behind his products.”

This is what Toyota’s executives should be doing. Going to every place in the world where there have been problems. Once there, they should personally apologize to their customers. They should be interviewed by the media in each city and repeat the apology. They should honestly answer the tough questions about what they knew and when they knew it. They should be speaking to every group that will listen. There should be town hall style meetings at dealerships for the customers and the general public to air grievances.

These public appearances will, in my opinion, do much to quell the anger and rebuild trust. Most people are willing to forgive a mistake, as long the one who makes the mistake sincerely apologizes.

Cut Prices

Second, a simple thing to do would to be slash prices on all models. Not a token five percent cut – a real one in the neighborhood of 25 percent. For those who have a car with a defective accelerator or brakes, give them a new car. I would throw into five years free maintenance for every car sold. Not just for oil changes and other minor things, but for all repairs from replacing a headlamp to replacing a transmission.

More Social Media

Third, I would make better use of social media than they are. Both Cho and Lenz should be blogging every week. Craig Newmark – the Craig of Craig’s List does, as does Jonathan Swartz, president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems and my personal favorite CEO blog, that of Southwest Airlines Gary Kelly. It has helped all three companies when they have hit rough patches. Explanations sound so much better when they come from the person in charge.

Finally, there are many, many people out there who are still strong Toyota supporters. Anecdotally, I know that because as Chester the Wonder Dog and I walk each day, I talk to Toyota owners. I have yet to find one who would get rid of their car.

I have also been on the Toyota Facebook page for U.S. owners. The level of support is amazing. Toyota needs to get those people more organized around company support. Most kind of companies would kill for that kind of support.

Put this all together and I think Toyota will be just fine.

When I first thought about writing this rant, I was considering ripping Toyota a new one. The way the automaker has handled the public relations for its various relations recalls was nothing short of abysmal. I think the White Star Line handled the initial P.R. dealing with the Titanic’s sinking better than Toyota did its accelerator problems.

But as the New Orleans Saints can attest, being behind in the first half doesn’t mean the game is lost.

Full disclosure: I drive a 2000 Toyota Camry. Both my children drive Corollas. However, I have never received compensation of any kind from Toyota. The closest I have come to anyone from the corporate side was Monday, Feb. 8^th when Jim Lentz, president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Sales, USA, was asked a question I had posted as part of a Digg Dialog.

At any rate, yes, Toyota was slow off the mark with its response to the accelerator issue. The initial statement in which the company said customer safety was “very important” to them made me cringe. They should have said that customer safety was the “most important” thing to the company. Saying “very” made me wonder what was more important.

Since then, however, the company has recovered its equilibrium. Frankly, I think doing all of the recalls at once is very a smart tactic. It’s the band-aid theory of action – some people take a band-aid off slowly. The pain might be less, but it is prolonged. Or, one can rip the band-off quickly and get it over with. It hurts more at first, but the pain goes away faster.

The apologies have come from the top down, which is a good start. The leadership has been willing to take the heat. Lenz has been everywhere, which is smart. He seems unflappable, he is well-spoken and he doesn’t shy away from tough questions. All good qualities in the crisis team leader.

That’s what Toyota is doing – they are taking their licks all at once. Yes, it is painful at first, but they will put it behind them.

It’s not like it is the only auto company to recall defective automobiles. Here, from Reuters News Service, is a list of recalls from 1971 on:

• 1971 – General Motors recalls 6.7 million vehicles due to engine mounts that separated from the vehicle and impacted the throttle.
• 1981 – GM recalls 5.8 million vehicles due to loose suspension bolts that affected steering.
• 1996 – Ford recalls more than eight million vehicles to replace defective ignition switches that could have led to electrical shorts and engine fires.
• July 1998 – GM recalls close to one million Cadillac, Pontiac and Chevrolet cars because of fears the air bags may have deployed by accident.
• Aug. 2000 – Japanese tire maker Bridgestone Corp recalls 14.4 million ATX, ATX II and Wilderness tires of certain sizes installed on Ford Motor Co.’s Explorer SUVs and sold separately in stores. The recall applied to all tires produced at the company’s Firestone U.S. division.
• 2004 – GM recalls nearly four million pickups because of corroding tailgate cables.
• April 2005 – GM recalls more than two million vehicles to fix a variety of potential safety defects, most of them on cars and trucks sold in the U.S., which includes 1.5 million full-size pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles from the 2003 to 2005 model years with second-row seat belts that GM says may be difficult to properly position across passengers’ hips.
• Oct. 2005 – Toyota recalls about 1.41 million cars globally, including the Corolla and 15 other models, due to trouble with their headlight switching systems.
• Dec. 2007 – Chrysler LLC recalls 575,417 vehicles as long-term wear on the gearshift assembly could cause them to shift out of park without the key in the ignition. The recall involved 2001 to 2002 model-year Dodge Dakota pickup trucks, Durango sports utility vehicles and Ram van models and 2002 model-year Ram pickup trucks.
• Aug. 2008 – GM recalls 857,735 vehicles equipped with a heated windshield-wiper fluid system in the United States after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said a short-circuit in the system may cause other electrical features to malfunction, increasing the risk of a fire.

For the record, Toyota has recalled 3.8 million vehicles in the latest recall and 4.2 million since 1971. Since 1971, General Motors has recalled 20.4 million of its autos. Ford has recalled 8 million, while Chrysler brought the rear with 575,417.

If you remember, the other automakers often resisted recalls. The Bridgestone tire problems, for instance, came to light because of a 60 Minutes news report. At least Toyota admitted it had a problem and dealt with it.

The key now is how Toyota will handle the issue going forward. I have some ideas that I will discuss next week that I think could help.