Toyota is using Digg.com to talk to you and me about Toyota’s safety recalls. Once the top questions have been submitted and “Digged”, Digg Dialogue will feature an interview wherein all those favored questions will be asked.
 
Toyota even has a “national social media and marketing integration manager”, Doug Frisbie. Frisbie has been fielding concerns on Twitter. Jim Lentz, president and CEO of Toyota Motor Sales USA will do the Digg Dialogue interview.

Challenging moments like this are a great time to initiate a third-party performance marketing campaign. Because the typical recipient of this form of email marketing, will have most likely heard the Toyota name a lot by now.  And odds are they may not always know just why they have heard that name. After all, not everybody is a marketing media junky. The Toyota name recognition, though possibly negative, will be high. So this increases the odds of actually grabbing inbox attention.

A brand name like Toyota has the opportunity to cease the moment and frame the debate or even reframe the safety recall into something positive. They can use this heightened awareness to do some quick market research or even scoop up some new social media members and internal email list recipients. Rather than plastering major newspapers with heart-felt mia culpas or trying to whip-out some up-beat TV commercials the automaker could really go to the root. They can delve deeply into consumer opinion via direct marketing.

By using performance, third-party email marketing, to INITIATE contact with consumers, Toyota would be able to act quickly and effectively to understand and work with consumer opinion.  There is a misconception about performance marketing that it is a kind of black sheep of real advertising. It is just for direct response stuff like the Snuggie and Ab Pro. That you have to use it to get people locked into re-bill campaigns. But really it is an outstandingly great way to start contact with a new potential life-long customer.

Traditional media placements meant to placate consumers into just forgetting the bad thing that just happened and to look on the sunny side of the street fall flat. Because now we are all talking to each other so things are different. We are sharing our thoughts, emotions and opinions online. Trying to make us just wash off that frowning face will not work, we need to be validated.

So use third-party email to reach out to consumers quickly. Design the campaign to simply collect new social media members or increase your email list. If you want to get speedy market insight you can design a brief survey with a small reward for the respondent. With performance marketing you pay only for the results, not the exposure.

So Digg for initial public response and then initiate consumer engagement via third-party performance email marketing. For Toyota negative attention can turn into positive cash flow.  They just need to be real with consumers.