Looks like a business school case study in the making

Toyota seems to have spent the last few weeks giving PR people a good example of how not to handle a negative story.

Firstly, there were the stories of floor mats preventing the release of the accelerator pedals and the potential for accidents.

Then, two days ago (on January 26, 2010), there is the halt to production in North America and the recall of another couple million vehicles.

But, worst of all, many consumers do not know that the latter recall is a separate problem because Toyota never managed to clearly articulate the fact. So many consumers do not appreciate that the reason for the second recall is nowhere near as dangerous as the first.

Let’s look at the state of the Toyota website on January 28, 2010.

http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/news.aspx is the main webpage (live).

Or click on the thumbnail to see a partial screenshot taken on January 28, 2010.

Shameful. Utterly shameful. Here at Vox Sapiens we have major concerns here that Toyota does not know the scale of its PR shortcomings and that there are big troubles ahead.

Vox Sapiens will be watching this closely and there may be more blog posts about Toyota.