EXERCISE 1

I bought a Toyota Corolla at the perfect time didn’t I?I got it last week and this week I thought I'd get to do a short public relations blog on Toyota, finding time to praise my car, Toyota in general and me for buying my car. Jeez. I was excited when the first thing I saw was that Toyota had a huge presence online. I typed Toyota Corolla on Google and got over a page of hits right away. The first site I tried in blogs about Toyota had me at a car search in 3 seconds flat. It wasn’t a blog, it was a sales pitch. A little deeper perhaps. I typed in Toyota Corolla on You Tube and sank.

Toyota on you tube: a whole lot of noise. Toyota is connected a horrible acceleration problem. Toyota recalled 8 million vehicles. I followed the line. Video of a horrible accident, photos of car crashes, harangues by angry owners. This was a public nightmare, a personal fear and yet a perfect subject for a blog about corporate presence online.

Toyota came from a place of great public relations and in their recent downfall and semi upswing became a poster child for public relations dos and don’ts. Toyota made good cars and had a great reputation. Sometimes things go wrong though and in a world where things go wrong and 6 billion people noticed, Toyota nearly blew it. The problem was an issue with unexpected acceleration in several of Toyota’s models. No one seemed to know why it was happening. Toyota initially blamed it on driver failure, and kept their response to the accidents very quiet in the years prior to 2009. However in 2009 there were crashes and camera phones and bad news went viral during an especially bad crash of an off duty police officer and his family. The next four or five months were chaotic for Toyota. There was an announcement that claimed no responsibility or very little and then another announcement which thought it might be some small problem with floor mats. The responses seemed typical of what any company might do- partition the blame until the nightmare gets resolved and Toyota was going to seem awkward and inapropriate no matter what they did.They were lambasted in Congressional hearings, scoffed at in the news and on you tube, and twitter. These people were losing serious ground publicly and financially. The company and their news environment were just too big and too fast.

I like to think of Feb 5, 2010 as Toyota’s turn around moment. There was an apology from the American president of Toyota on Feb 1 but it was so much more satisfying to have Mr. Toyota (yes, that is his name), the president of Toyota, apologize to everyone and especially all of his customers for all of the suffering he and his company had caused them and he wanted to let them know that he wanted to build their trust back in him and it was on you tube.

From that moment, Toyota has been publishing all owners twits requesting help and its responses positive and negative Toyota uses you tube to explain how the accelerator works, what may have gone wrong with it. Toyota post phone numbers and website addresses for questions,which is, if not being transparent, at least gives the impression of trying to be transparent. They keep blogs open and talk about what goes on with Toyota, although there is more of a sales pitch to the few I’ve glanced at.

One of Toyota’s genius movements has been to blanket youtube with very funny commercials, wry, self disparaging and interesting. It appeals to people who might buy Toyota: middle class individuals who understood they might be skewed. An especially funny you tube set of commercials used James Lipton playing to type

http://www.youtube.com/user/ToyotaUSA#g/c/910796CC399DFE37

So, how well did Toyota do in changing their corporate imagine in a year’s time? Prior to yesterday, I looked around you tube, and goggle, typing in Toyota, Toyota Corolla, and Toyota Corolla acceleration and got two negative hits out of seven. Pretty impressive results. Last night the results of the NASA study requested by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that initially held Toyota responsible for the accidents based on beliefs that the acceleration was electronically involved were announced. According to NHTSA, there was no electronic involvement; Toyota had paid its dues in recalling cars, fixing the minor problems and paying fines. As far as they were concerned Toyota was off the hook.

Now comes an interesting lesson in corporate imagining. Last night and today had nothing but good news and validation for Toyota yet you tube is filled with bad publicity. The car crashes are back, and the angry owners as well. Unfortunately this is the fill in information connected to the news.

Toyota, so far has kept a pretty low profile, considering their insistence that it wasn’t anything electronic in the first place.They have proved they can handle the media so far. They know how to work with transparency, they know how to take responsibility, and they know how to work with humor and they really know how to work the boards in Google, Twitter, and You Tube. I’m curious as to what their next move will be in the stirred up hornets nest.

As for me, I still like my car but I'm going to do a lot more research. And I am going to ask about that accelerator pedal.

Collinsondetection

Muttering to self collinsondetection. Found a great new blog, got excited about it, completely forgot how to add it so tried to add it the old fashioned way. Then forgot how to do that. We'll cover that in another chapter. In the meantime, read more of him, he's interesting.

Haven't posted for a while or read the readings. I imagine everyone else has. I always imagine they do and am always pleasantly surprised to find others who haven't. I have been working though on all of the new technology. I learned how to sync google calendar to my ical by going to an apple istore and plopping everything in front of them. I spent the night before reading instructions and almost getting it. I kept thinking there must be one more thing I should do and I was right. It was just the wrong thing. I'm so delighted to be so close to the right things. Also to be so close to dark chocolate to celebrate. In an aside I learned that no matter what I do I can't sync my ipod to two computers without deleted one of the compters information off the ipod. Sigh. I'm not sure what that has to do with branding unless it has to do with Apple but I must say, they have made a name for themselves for me. I'll do the reading tomorrow, the research the day after and the writing the day after that to see what I have to say. And I get to read others blog posts! Reading such good writing is such a pleasure!

Library 2.0 again

Do I agree that library 2.0 exists and what it is if it does exist? The library geek John Blyberg thinks that we are a different society, that our needs are different as a result of our communication styles. In fact he thinks that our needs as baby boomers are different than his because he has been raised in a society where communication has changed. Instead of a linear style of communication, i.e. I talk or write, you listen, and then respond, everyone one now talks at the same time. Nowadays as a result of twitter and you tube and Google where information can be updated almost instantly, everyone gets information at the same time. So information has changed, according to blyberg.net. We or they, no longer think the same way because we no longer process information the same way.
First, in terms of information, doesn't this sound more like a large get together to you? I remember them from my youth. Everyone got together, shared information, changed ideas as the information was processed and then reprocessed it.The only difference I see in those terms is that it seems like a longer get together. It may be different in the library and perhaps be driven by technology as suggested. I think though that it's an overwrought word. We are a service driven organization, always have been according to the ALA. Articles like Casey and Savastinuks' Service for the next-generation library suggest that we have to go out and find our patrons and bring our services to them are we really doing anything different than we have been? We're still serving the public, albeit with a less authoritative attitude.

See previous post

And so,
I'm officially down the rabbit hole as I hit this new world of blogs, readers, rss, and wikis and delicious. I'm going to publish what I think of this new world of social media which is a very good term for saying I'm writing what I think I'm learning. So far I've learned that I still know nothing about delicious, which means I'm going to be wrestling with it for a while. I know it has something to do with tags and finding things but that's it. I want to say I know nothing about nothing but as it turns out I do. I have an iphone into which I can dictate texts, an apple computer onto which I can add things to a calendar that get magically transposed to my school calendar. As soon as evernote lets me sign on again, I'll be putting all sorts of work from school into it. I wanted onenote but it's not yet available on apple except through the iphone app and I refuse to type that much into the iphone. I also use facebook a lot and consider the other social media obsolete - so obsolete that I can't remember what it's called.
I also have four cats which seems out of sync with what I'm writing until you notice that my writing turns into a series of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzs and xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxs. Two of the four love the computer, one stands on the keyboard kneading the letters and the other claws at the keys furiously. Last week she removed the ., the ?, and nearly demolished the ". Cat protection habits are important: yet another thing I've learned.
So the obvious things I want to learn are how to operate within this virtual world successfully. I like it here. Dodads abound and the language is different than on facebook and twitter. On those two a whole new language and thinking style seem to be forming, a style of interacting I've never seen before. I'm more comfortable with the language style on the sites we're discussing tonight. Even with the gadgetry, the system works in language I understand. I want to be able to multitask here. I want to create a document, plan a video and make it part of a wiki with a group and then work on it with them. I want to see how to present my information in this new place.
I just noticed the label section for the blog so now I'm going to post on that and see what happens.

I found my blog!!! I left it nearly a year ago and two years or so before that. I don't remember who it gets published to or how to make a new one so if this goes out and bores you, just ignore it. Better yet, contact me and show me how to get out of there. It will make both of us happy. Now I'm preparing to blog about something for class but first have to remember where to put the address for this. So here goes. And if you don't hear from me soon it will be because I've lost myself again...Sigh.