OK, every family has its problems. Toyota, which started as
a division of the Toyota Automatic Loom Works, managed to develop a worldwide
presence and reputation, survived a number of seismic recalls and some actual
seismic activity is celebrating its 75th anniversary.
They used to be a perennial #1 on our Customer Loyalty
Engagement Index, driving away with high levels of engagement, sales, and
attendant profits. The recalls did shake them up a bit. Issues of safety and
customer care and, well, safety hit them pretty badly and they ended up in the
middle of the pack – #10 – three years ago.
Brands that start out with high degrees of loyalty and
emotional engagement have something better than high degrees of name awareness,
or even high degrees of brand awareness with on-board diagnostics to fall back
on. They get the consumer’s benefit of the doubt. To be sure, that well of
forgiveness isn’t bottomless, but it’s 6 times deeper than brands without that non-optional
extra, which don’t get their tires kicked or taken out for a test-drive, let
alone purchased.
But Toyota has moved up the list and has currently driven
the brand back to the #2 spot on the 2013 CLEI (just behind Ford and Hyundai,
tied for the #1 spot this year), which is something to celebrate in addition to
their 75th anniversary. To honor that,
they’ve created an interactive family tree that lets consumers connect information from the company's
history to find out anything they want about any Toyota model or year. It’s a
car-guy/gal’s dream, or, if you’re not so into cars, it a really cool piece of
interactive design.
Toyota reclaimed the title of world’s largest automaker in
2012 from General Motors (#4 on the 2013 CLEI list, up from #6 last year), has
recently posted a rise in earnings, and pretty much leads automakers in having
a full range portfolio of passenger, luxury, minivans, and trucks.
All of which may prove the truth of the maxim that the
family you come from isn’t as important as the family you’re ultimately going
to have.
Connect with Robert on LinkedIn.
Find out more about what makes customer loyalty happen and how Brand Keys metrics is able to predict future consumer behavior: brandkeys.com. Visit our YouTube channel to learn more about Brand Keys methodology, applications and case studies.
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