You Sleep When You Die

Floor mat.
Accelerator.
Brakes.

What else is left?? How can so many things be wrong with Toyota’s vehicles? Come on Toyota: you built your brand on dependability and reliability. When did you throw it out the f#%$-ing window? I am shocked and appalled that Toyota – the stellar manufacturer that it is – currently has more than 5 million vehicles on recall for defective floor mats, 2.3 million of its top-selling models on recall for unintended acceleration, and now the Prius on recall for faulty brakes – who knows how many cars that will affect?!

Toyota only has one chance to make this right.

Toyota announced yesterday that they are recalling 2.3 million vehicles. The recall affects eight Toyota brands. As if that weren’t catastrophic enough, the automaker has also completely shut down the assembly line for these eight vehicles.

I’ve never seen anything like this in all my years in the automotive ad business. Check out my column in Ad Age to find out what Toyota must do immediately to fix the situation…before it’s too late.

Within the past couple of weeks, GM announced that it will start hearing pitches for select Chevrolet assignments and for Cadillac’s national and regional dealer accounts. Not long before that, VW announced that it was parting ways with Crispin after four years. Should we chalk up this rampant changing of the guard to tough economic times?

Absolutely not.

Many industry experts were surprised about the recent announcement that VW and Crispin are parting ways. After all, VW’s market share actually improved in recent months and although sales were still down, the decline wasn’t as steep as the automotive industry as a whole. In addition, the four-year partnership resulted in some memorable and much talked about advertising.

Crispin certainly helped elevate VW to a new level of ‘coolness.’ Unfortunately, to be cool is often to be niche. And when your job is to market a brand that is dependent on the mainstream masses, coolness alone just isn’t going to cut it. And that’s precisely where Crispin missed it with VW.

By now almost everyone has heard about the new “Cash for Clunkers” program.

I recently commented about the pros and cons of the program in an interview for an Ad Age article. Click here to check it out.