Public Relations of Toyota Essays

Public Relations of Toyota Essays Public Relations of Toyota Essay Public Relations of Toyota Essay Public Relations of Toyota Throughout the years Toyota has enjoyed a solid reputation for half a century. Toyota produced quality, durable vehicles that outlasted and outperformed many vehicles. However Toyota has been hit with a lot of scandals and has been misunderstood. Toyota is now taking steps in the right direction to minimize negative situations involving the accelerators on some of its vehicles. Toyota is now reconnecting to their customers and changing the outlook on their views of Toyota as a whole! The public relations professionals are working hard at developing a good, positive relationship between a firm and the public it serves. With investing in great public relations for your business will help your businesses success. Great Public Relations, supporting your business can create and build up the image of successful company. During times of adverse publicity an effective Public Relations professional, can remove the misunderstanding and can create mutual understanding between the business and the public? Toyota strives to assist the communities where we live and work by supporting local organizations focused on the areas of environment, education, and safety to family’s everywhere. In addition, Toyota partners with several regions, in the Northeastern, Midwestern, Southeastern, and Western of the U. S. Toyota is a company based for family and values their customers with great customer service. In almost every city there is a Toyota dealer near to help service every Toyota customer needs. Public Relations play an important role in developing a credible and recognizable brand online and offline for any business and it harnesses the power of third party testimonials in the media. Public Relations, delivers a tremendous return on investments because the articles and stories generated in the media are credible. When a Public Relations program is implemented in conjunction with marketing and advertising programs, a brand can be developed and strengthened over a period of time. A successful brand always comes from customers with their love and support for the company brand. In addition, all of great things that customers think of the company’s brand it what builds the company’s brand image. Toyota Public Relations professionals recognized this when building the brand of their company, since they had their very first fall, with recalls and accelerators on some of its vehicles. Toyota was first founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 as a spinoff from his fathers company Toyota Industries to create automobiles. The name Toyota is from the founders name (Toyoda) the Toyota symbol represents the T in Toyota. The Toyota symbol is all the letters of Toyota, stylized and overlayed. The two interlocking circles inside the larger circle represent Toyota the company and the customer/consumer and represents their inter-relations and importance to another. The larger circle represents the world and the idea that Toyota and their customers are a part of it. Toyota spent roughly $1 billion on marketing during the fourth quarter of 2009 alone in an attempt to help drive up sales of its vehicles in the U. S. (W. Scott, 2010). Although Toyota has had to shift gears from that proactive push and into a reactive mode more recently, the automaker expects to spend less on advertising in 2010 than it did in 2009. But industry experts say the automaker must remain aggressive if it hopes to grow sales and repair its image (W. Scott, 2010). Toyota is now making steps to rebuild their image, in a great way, the first positive step in what will most likely connect with public relations overhauls that aim to socially re-connect Toyota to their consumers. Toyota’s new technique of brand marketing has given other Public Relations professionals a creative method to follow when creating campaigns for their customers. In addition, In order to keep the publics perception is the publics reality, and the perception is slowly but surely looking great. Hence, it is very crucial for any business to run a public relations campaign, however, the traditional modes of running such a campaign are slowly becoming obsolete. It is extremely important for more and more businesses to update their, public relations campaign for the 21st century. And also, to act immediate with new methodologies and tools, which include blogging and social media sites. In today’s society the Internet allows companies to take on a new benefit that they would not be able to use in the real world without technology. Creating different services online will ensure your company’s brand is stronger than the rest. Online customers can interact with the company’s brand and its identity in a way no other medium can. Social media sites, such as Facebook is a vast opportunity for businesses to promote their brand online to millions of people at once and at no cost. Today, Toyota’s social media strategy is to urge the public to invent ways to use Toyota’s technology in new, innovative ways, ways that will help â€Å"make a better world†. This new strategy will work brilliantly to create millions of consumers and buyers for the company’s brand (Toyota) and keep them interested in what the company has more to offer. Toyota uses social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to create a digital dialogue with its customers. Kimberly Kyaw, Senior Media Strategist, for Toyota Motor Sales, U. S. A. , and Inc. as hired on by Toyota to in 1999, to lead Toyota’s digital media strategy and planning for general and multi-cultural markets (imediaconnection, 2012). Soon after Kyaw, handled escalated customer cases when appropriate, offered goodwill to maintain customer satisfaction loyalty. Developed marketing strategy (objectives, targeting, positioning, messaging, source of sales and key market/consumer insight s) to inform communication creative plan. Analyzed quantitative and qualitative data and identified consumer and market trends to create actionable recommendations for future vehicle enhancements, lifecycle planning pricing. Kyaw, provided the company with the necessary information Toyota now has connections with 500 plus networkers that interacts with social media scene. This will allow customers and employees to interact and suggest ways of improving the company’s services and products. Since the beginning of Toyota’s test run with social media sites they have used such sites to help promote events and initiatives such as â€Å"Try before you buy†. This method is used for many potential customers for Toyota, who are looking into buying new Toyota vehicle. Or perhaps, may be in the market for a new vehicle and want to experience driving without dealing with a sales associate. This is Toyota’s new secret weapon called â€Å"Toyota Rent-A-Car† (TRAC) it gives drivers the opportunity to enjoy a new Toyota or Scion before committing to a purchase or lease. Also, being dealer-based means that you can purchase a TRAC vehicle if your weekend romance with a Toyota or Scion rental turns into a long lasting love affair! This new marketing method for Toyota has been a success and contributed millions to the company. This has also been the most engaging factor on Travelocity, with advertisement in the last year. Toyota, also used social media to promote their Toyota Pro Celebrity Race, it has brought together a star-studded field of Hollywood’s elite to race for charity. The race is brought on by many stars from film, television, music, sports and fashion that will showcase their newly earned racing chops in identically prepared, race-ready Scion TCs on the historic 10-lap, 1. 97-mile street circuit through the downtown streets of Long Beach in Southern California. On behalf of each celebrity racer, Toyota donates $5,000 to racing for Kids every year and another $5,000 to the winning racer’s charity of choice. Racing for Kids, a national nonprofit program benefiting children’s hospitals throughout the country, (in this case, Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach and Children’s Hospital in Orange County, Calif. ), was created as a way to connect sick children with their favorite celebrities and race-car drivers. Toyota has donated more than $1. 9 million to various children’s hospitals since 1991, on behalf of this race and its participants (ELB, 2011). Just like any business there are ups and downfalls, and Toyota has seen their fair share of both. In 2009, Toyota came under attack by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that established 3. 8 million of its vehicles of having an unintended acceleration defect. This was led to a tragic accident with a California family who was an owner of a Lexus a (Toyota vehicle) losing four people in the car due to the floor mat, being on the accelerator. Although, the federal agency said it was still investigating the exact cause of the acceleration problem, this still left Toyota owners concerned and terrified. This was brought to the media on a silver platter, with the news, and dealerships everywhere. Toyota released a letter, with apology and tried to correct the problem but mistakenly made matters worse. The letter was misleading and didn’t sound sincere nor did it correct the problem it clearly stated that there was no major problem with the Toyota vehicles. This almost destroyed Toyota makers as a whole! However, Toyota took action and right away got great public relations personnel, and they started monitoring their campaign sites often with updates daily. Toyota corrected the problem with the media and consumers by providing the customer with newer and better quality vehicles. They are slowly but surely rebuilding the trust of their loyal customers and regaining them back. They have made a remedy to the situation with providing safer vehicles. Toyota’s Public relations personnel addressed consumers concerns and followed up with action. As a public relations professional in the 21st century, it’s important to constantly reach out to the public, not only to enhance your company’s appearance, but to do on to he customers in a good as well. Even though Toyota will undoubtedly be under the magnifying glass for their latest recall, having a public relations professional can be an excellent card to pull when having a downfall. The Nonprofit and for-profit businesses have multiple similarities and difference. The different marketing concepts contribute to the differing factor being the purpose of for-profit marketing is t o encourage customers to buy, while the purpose of nonprofit marketing is to encourage people to give as a charity. Investment returns may vary between the two, although the principles of marketing still remain the same, however some of the methods must be different. In that being said, the main purpose of marketing for-profit businesses is to inform potential customers in your target market to let them know about your product or service and how it can benefit them, with a goal of selling it in exchange for money. The business keeps the money, and the customer enjoys the product or service that they had purchased. However, for profit marketing focuses on developing new markets and ideas, for existing products or identifying markets for new product lines ahead. Then so, as non-profit business markets the work it does. Building customer awareness is the main factor of the marketing industry. The customer gives money to the organization in exchange for the opportunity to contribute towards its humanitarian work and good deed. For profit marketing, focuses on keeping the funds, while the individual retains their knowledge from the organization. Meanwhile, the organization uses the money to make a difference in society and to its organization as well. For-profit business can market using a variety of methods, such as marketing mix, target market identification, position, branding, and public relations and advertising. The not for profits organizations use the majority of these methods; for instance, the non-profit will conduct market analysis to identify potential donors and sponsors. Nonprofits organizations are tax exempt. Most of them are supported by their members of the organizations who take pride in the organization. Nonprofit organizations have members who contribute to the organization. They also have donations and grants that help support their organization which makes them different from a for profit business. A nonprofit organization maintains its great reputation by helping others and giving back to the public. The difference between the marketing of the two types of businesses is the fulfillment of the customer need. Unlike the for-profit makes a profit on the sales from the customer’s purchases. Meanwhile the goal of the for-profit marketing customer has a need of their own that they want to fulfill by making purchasing to their business of choice and getting great customer service in return. There are many nonprofits businesses that do conduct retail sales of promotional items to help raise funds, but this is not their primary product or service, this is just a short term offer to make customers feel good about their purchasing by also contributing to a good cause. In today’s society building and promoting a company’s brand takes a lot of effort and hard work. There are many different methods that public relations professionals can take a hold of when rebuilding a company’s brand or even making it better than before. The changes in the 21st century have made it easy for non-profit and for-profit businesses to communicate to the media. Great Public Relations professionals know how to conduct business in a professional way with the media and still uphold the company by supporting their image. Public relations professionals will and always further enhance the likelihood through its own growth and development and will produce more success towards businesses. By Public relations professionals having a prompt respond to the media can help the businesses image and withhold their loyal consumers. Great Public Relations professional always has a plan and they direct the development and communication of informational programs to maintain favorable public and stockholder perceptions of an organizations accomplishments and agenda. Indeed, a great public relations professional is great to have on your side when coming into a downfall with a company and needing help with a spokesperson. All in all Public relation personals contribute success to many company’s and organizations.