Social Media

Could the Toyota Recall Crisis be Helping the Brand?


Shiv Singh is the VP & Global Social Media Lead at For more information on social influence marketing, you can read his book Social Media Marketing for Dummies, visit his blog, and follow him on Twitter.

There's no question that Toyota is in deep trouble with its current recall crisis. But could these issues actually be helping its brand? Shockingly, an analysis of Toyota shows that its Social Influence Marketing (SIM) Score saw an uptick in January. Who'd have thought that a crisis of such significant magnitude could actually help a brand's perception? This seems to be true, at least in the short term, even though sales may be dropping. Let me explain how.

A Look at the Numbers

There are a number of ways to track brand perception. During my time at Razorfish, I have helped develop the SIM Score, a basic equation for calculating how a brand is faring on the social web.

Inspired by the Net Promoter Score, the SIM Score measures a brand's health on the social web and is determined by calculating the total market share of consumer conversations for the brand, adjusted for sentiment in relation to its competitors. The table below outlines the exact formula for calculating a brand's score. The data can be sourced using any major conversation monitoring vendor that tracks mentions and sentiment for a brand and its key competitors.

simscore table image

This computation provides an indexed score — the degree to which consumers like or dislike the brand when they talk to each other about it on the social web. In a nutshell, it includes a measure of reach (volume) and of likability (sentiment), combining them to give the indexed score relative to a brand's direct competitors.

Between the months of November, December and January, the Toyota SIM Score (calculated using data sourced from Radian6) moved from 19.8 down to 17.56 and then up in January 24.84. If you look at the graph below, Toyota's SIM Score increased at the expense of Nissan and General Motors. Ford saw a very slight dip too.

toyota simscore chart

Why the Uptick?




What does this tell us? Firstly, that the SIM Score fluctuations and the related Edmunds user intent analysis have unearthed a counterintuitive trend with regard to Toyota; increased buyer interest even though there's a lot of bad news about the brand. It also shows that there hasn't been significant short-term damage to the Toyota brand on the social web, at least relative to its direct competitors. This of course is likely to change, as more news about Toyota's troubles have broken since January, and more people are talking about it online today. I fully expect the Toyota SIM Score to start dropping again when the February numbers are computed. It is worth pointing out the SIM Score is a measure of a brand's health on the social web and not always a leading indicator of sales, though it can be for certain product categories.

Toyota's Next Step

Toyota Prius Image

What should Toyota be doing? First, it is obviously most important for them to solve the problems with their cars. That's a no-brainer. But they also have to start talking to consumers more directly on the social web. So far, it seems that their responses have appeared a little slow and clumsy. Giving consumers information about the recall in more human, easily understandable and digestible pieces of content is key. They should explain exactly what they're doing, why things will be different in the future, and how the engineering problems developed. And as soon as the clouds pass, Toyota should talk about the amazing deals that they have. It is obvious that consumers are interested in them.

More business resources from Mashable:

- 5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online
- 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
- HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs

[Image Credit: Handolio]

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