Toyota 's Public Relations Management

Crisis communication is the most important aspect of external and internal organization communication. This type of communication ranges from image restoration campaigns to employee turnover. In the articles that I have analyzed, I discovered many examples of crisis communications and its importance. I will discuss the Bridgestone-Firestone Corporation's image restoration campaign and explain Benoit's theory of image restoration. Also, I will discuss how crisis communications fits into public relations models. Two examples for discussion will be how supervisors should convey bad-news to their employees, and group communication within employee turnover. My last example for this discussion will be Bill Clinton's image repair discourse.

Managers and leaders do not welcome crises because they don't realize that problems and crisis if handled with intelligence become an opportunity for the company. The purpose of writing this paper to discuss the case of "Johnson & Johnson" that became a hero in the eyes of public (Rehak, 2002) and gained their market share back with the help of their effective public relations plan. They accomplished this by making good relations with public and by proving how much they were concerned about the safety of their consumers.

Zaremba (2010) points out that “crisis is any unanticipated event, incident, situation, or development that has the potential to damage or destroy your organization’s reputation”. (P.234) This definition indicates two attributes of crisis: unexpectedness and destructiveness, so effective communication is crucial to manage a crisis. The Nuance Group, a successful management consulting company, with a reputation of experienced and highly educated consultants, was facing the crisis brought by its great “reputation”. As a consultancy, it’s their profession to market themselves. A glossy brochure with specific introduction of consultants’ information, which is the highlight of the company’s reputation, is a fabulous method to market

For more than 50 years, Toyota Motor Corporation has been one of the world’s leading manufacturers of motor vehicles in the United States. It was born a Japanese company in 1935 and came to America in 1957. Now headquartered in Toyota City, Japan, it employs more than 300 thousand employees globally (Toyota Motor Corporation Company Profile, 2012). In addition Toyota is a global marketing organization. It strategically operates primarily through Japan, Asia, Europe, and North America; but its vehicles are sold in more than 170 countries and regions across the globe (Toyota Motor Corporation Company Profile, 2012). The Toyota brand is traditionally defined by brand attributes such as global leadership, innovation,

Due to Toyota’s financial greed and unethical practice, vehicles were wrongly equipped with faulty brakes, sticking pedals and poor quality door looks, which caused death of many Toyota customers and hundreds of dollars in damages. When a company like Toyota acts in an ethically questionable manner, it causes the company to lose customers and develop a negative reputation. Customer tend to lose faith in the company and have to look for better service

The success of a company depends on relationships with the public such as consumers, suppliers, investors, employees, government and media. Since public relation practitioners are the once who do the actual communication between their organization and its public it is obvious that public relation is a management function.

Press agentry, public information, two-way asymmetric public relations, and two-way symmetric public relations are four models of public relations theory devised by Grunig and Hunt (1983). In this essay, the author goes on to identify an example each from current public relations business practices that goes on to show the four public relation models in action. Further stress is provided to ensure that the examples have all been taken place within last twelve months in the Australian media and justification of selection is to be done by comparing it with real world examples that are chosen.

The purpose of this report is to examine if the reasoning behind well-known car manufacturer, Toyota’s loss of revenue and leading market position is alone as a result of extensive product recalls following a fatal crash of a Lexus ES 350 on August 28th 2009. The journal article, “Toyota Crisis: Management Issue?” (Yuanyuan Feng 2010) provides an outline of the key factors that triggered the 2009 Toyota crisis, and explores whether the fall in the company’s returns by 19% were caused purely as a result of the recall and safety concerns, or something much deeper.

Media relations can be defined as one of the most significant areas of the practice of public relations. (Shaw&White, 2004) It enhances the practice of public relations by serving a systematic, strategized and mutually beneficial relationship between journalists and the public relations practitioners to build credibility, understanding and respect between the two parties. (Supa&Zoch, 2009) It is essential to cultivate a positive and healthy relationship between public relations practitioners and journalists because journalists tend to look at public relations practitioners in a negative way where they believe that they spin information to get free publicity which making it difficult for journalists to report legitimate news and at the same time, against the basic rules of news writing. (Fedler and DeLorme, 2002) Another study by Kiranjit and Halimahton (2006) also suggests that public relations practitioners and journalists are very much sceptical about each other’s role and the relationship between two of them is doubtful and uncertain. From the point of view of public relations practitioners, they complaint that journalists do not understand the role of public relations. On the other side, journalists tend to think that public relations

Toyota is a key player in global automotive market. Its structure constitutes if various production plants in different locations and a very strong branding which helps it capture a major market share. Like other enterprises, Toyota has several strengths and weakness which makes it what it is now. Toyota heavily invests in Research and development which helps it come up reputable product line which is spread out throughout the world because of its strengthening global distribution network however its recent product recalling, loose grip in key geographic areas and wrong allocation of resources shows that even a strong brand like Toyota has its weaknesses.

Public relations seeks the interests of the organization, through the mass media to improve the organization 's reputation, and the principle of mutual benefit(Johansson, B, & Larsson, L 2015). In today, public relations plays an increasingly large proportion of the companies, especially in the crisis situation of the company, the public relations to maintain the company 's image to make a significant contribution (Ha, JH, & Ferguson, MA 2015). The crisis is due to some unexpected events cause damage to corporate image, It requires companies to make key decisions and for emergency response (Ki, E, & Brown, KA 2013). In recent years, Social media has begun to play an important role in the crisis communication and management.

It has been created also a gap between Image and Vision. After the crisis Toyota's relationship with its main stakeholders (suppliers, national and international customers, employees, dealers and investors) was not so strong as before, because it was loosing its reputation. The investors and the suppliers were complaining because recalling million of vehicles, and the customers were disappointed because they were not receiving what they expected.

The public relations tactics in relation to the corporate context will now be examined. Customer relations can be associated with the monitoring of attitudes of key publics and stakeholders especially in regards to any negative incidents that have the potential to effect the organisation’s reputation and consumer trust (Wilcox, 2013, p.312). For Malaysian Airlines, this is evident given the potential for consumer boycotts with the missing aircraft’s (Crossman Communications, 2015, p2). Having over 12, 000 employees, employee relations are important for the organisation. Employee relations consist of monitoring employees’ attitudes and beliefs towards the organisation (Wilcox, 2013, p316) as there is potential for negative word of mouth by employees essentially damaging the company’s reputation. This is evident as according to Malaysian Airlines, they offer a “dynamic exciting environment that nurtures a diverse talented team that work to make great things happen” (2017). Finally, media relations are vital in a corporate context as “negative coverage can cause a corporation’s reputation to plummet” (Wilcox, 2013, p. 310). Having said that, it is important as public relations professionals to establish positive relationships with those who operate in the media industry. Kimberly Blessing argues the two fields (public relations and journalism) have an important working interrelationship with “60% of PR

As the name of the discipline implies, public relations is how an organization builds beneficial relationships with its key stakeholders. With effective communication as the practices’ primary tool, modern day organizations have taken advantage of proficient practitioners to boost exposure of their company and its message across to international audiences.

One potential threat for Volkswagen is that Toyota may respond strategically by also cutting its prices. However, given Toyota’s quality problems over the past year, they will not be able to lower prices, as this possibly would create the perception of lower quality.. First and foremost, Toyota needs to ensure it handles its quality problems to its customers’ satisfaction. The auto maker needs to ensure the public perception is that Toyota is being upfront, honest, and responsible in dealing with recalls and the