Culture and Communication: The Story of Toyota Motor Corporation
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Culture and Communication: The Story of Toyota Motor Corporation
Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) is the biggest automaker in the world. The company owes much of its success to its strong leadership, lean manufacturing, a strong company culture, and vibrant communication (Toyota, 2014). However, TMC previously faced a strong public outcry over promotional materials seen as racist, culturally insensitive, and downright offensive. This paper looks at the issues surrounding this communication gaffe and how they were resolved. In so doing, the following five questions are answered:
- What is the place of communication in TMC’s overall strategy?
- How does TMC communicate its brand with the mass market?
- How multi-cultural is TMC’s corporate communication strategy?
- How does TMC engage with communities?
- How does TMC resolve conflict arising from communication?
History of the Issue and How it was Resolved
As part of its communication strategy, TMC issued an advertorial in 2001 that got the company into problems. Reverend Jesse Jackson (the main character) led protests, claiming that the promotions were blatantly racist. The reverend further claimed that Toyota deliberately excluded Blacks from its board and dealerships and threatened to lead a boycott against Toyota products. Further, he demanded that Toyota gets rid of Saatchi & Saatchi, the firm’s advertising agency. The media jumped into the fray and reproduced another advertisement by Toyota published in 1998 and which had also racist undertones (Register Guard, 2001). Following this outburst, TMC engineered a communications strategy to appease the offended groups.
To resolve the issue, TMC did the following. First, a formal apology was issued by its Senior Vice President, Don Esmond, to all those who were affected by the promotions. Secondly, TMC requested that Saatchi & Saatchi gets an African-American affiliate. Thirdly, TMC initiated expansion of the company’s multi-cultural marketing capacity. Fourthly, TMC set up a diversity panel made up of employees from all the ethnicities and whose mandate is to review all promotional advertisements prior to their use and distribution. Fifthly, TMC set up a diversity fund worth $7.8 billion. Furthermore, TMC held several meetings with Reverend Jesse Jackson. The reverend described the meetings as productive and thereafter paid glowing tribute to TMC. Finally, TMC promoted Veronica Pollard, an African-American woman, as the Group Vice President overseeing corporate communications. She was also assigned the role of Vice President in charge of diversity programmes. The issue was amicably resolved.
The story above raises three issues. The first issue is on how to engage productively with communities. The second is on how to ensure communication is multi-cultural and does not offend any racial group and the third is on how to deal with criticism in a sober and responsible manner while engaging all the stakeholders involved. In conclusion, the story outlined above demonstrates that having good products and strong leadership is not enough; a company must also have a strong communication strategy that is multi-cultural.