This is part 2 of a 2 part'er. For part 1, click here.
Soon after Lexus’ introduction I had the pleasure of experiencing an LS400 for an evening (a nice little perk; evaluating vehicles from a consumer standpoint all for the sake of research). I remember sitting in the car, starting it up, and two minutes later pulling over in a parking lot because I was overwhelmed by all the workings on the dashboard. I reached into the glove box and pulled out the owner’s manual and started reading. Important data stored in my brain, I continued my test run.
That vehicle was priced at $35,000; at that time a Mercedes E Class was around 50K. Hope I got those numbers right; pulled them from my cranium! Lexus, by the way, was Toyota’s debut into the U.S. luxury market.
Infiniti, Nissan’s new brand, intro’d with products similar to the two Lexus models. The Infiniti styling was perhaps not as modern as Lexus but let’s remember that the overall look of most vehicles was still rather square with some rounding on the corners. However, Infiniti’s flagship, the Q45, may have suffered some loss of sales simply for lacking a grille.
At any rate, Lexus took Infiniti to the cleaners. And Toyota showed us how to something bad and make it into something good. Turns out those $35,000 LS400s had a few quality issues out of the gate. This could have been devastating for the brand; instead, Lexus came forward towards the end of 1989 and voluntarily recalled 8,000 vehicles that were already in consumer’s garages.
Okay, you’re thinking, so what? Car manufacturers have voluntary recalls every day. True. Now here’s where an important word comes in. Expectations. Would you, as a consumer, expect an automotive company to take care of you with customer service that would far exceed your expectations?
Hello marketing opportunity! Not only could Lexus fix the problem by sending service technicians to consumer’s home or place of work to pick up and return a repaired car to those consumers, they could generate some positive imagery about the brand. According to a Los Angeles Times Article, LS400 owners in more remote locations were reached via flying in the technicians! I’m sure the media latched onto some stories surrounding those extremes!
Lexus quickly became known as THE automotive brand for customer service. It’s no surprise that they’ve topped studies such as the JD Power Initial Quality Survey many times.
Simply put, those initial buyers got more than a car. And Toyota cleverly found a way for their new brand to gain a foothold in the states. A standard was set for other automotive manufacturers and perhaps others outside of the car industry to aspire to.
LinkedIn could take a lesson here. Yes, they admitted that password security was breached and that’s great. However, the issue had already spread like wildfire via Twitter, blogs, and other social media sources. Why not “save face” by being upfront right from the start, accept the issue head on, and then resolve it in a way that leaves a path for moving forward again.
Brands, take some lessons from Lexus! Keep your hands on the wheel and enjoy the Lexus commercial from 1989 below. For Part One, click here. Oh, and ...say hello! There's thewebsite, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ ...I'll say Hi back.
Companies make mistakes. Sometimes BIG ones. They may deny it at first in an effort to make it go away. However, we don’t always believe them and ultimately, they dig a deeper hole to the point where they have to come clean.
And then, the public knows they were wrong in the first place and the brand is tarnished by the whole rotten affair.
Why try to sweep things under the rug in the first place?
In my earlier days as a research analyst for a major car brand I was impressed by an example of a vehicle manufacturer coming forward and stating that oops, they made a mistake. It’s over twenty years later now, and that memory is still with me; obviously, they made an impression and they did it right from the start.
The automotive industry was in for a big change in the mid-eighties. Just a decade before, Americans were accepting of all those small Japanese cars that were being imported into the country, thanks, in a large part to those “oh so high” gas prices. The notion of fuel economy became important to us.
So, we fell in love with Japanese cars for our basic transportation needs. It took Toyota a while to really “break us in”; in fact, they quickly discontinued sales of their first car available on U.S. shores in the early sixties. The quality just wasn’t at an acceptable level yet. Toyota came roaring back a few years later with a vehicle that was designed for the U.S. market and this time, they gained some market share and momentum. Other brands from Japan followed with some stumbling and eventually finding their places in the American marketplace.
So after Honda introduced a new brand, Acura, in 1986, it marked a turning point for Japanese vehicles all over again. The word luxury, for the first time, was associated with a Japanese vehicle for the very first time. Drum brakes and no power steering? Say goodbye to basics! Now, the European brands, most of them known for luxury, were enjoying an upward ride at that time, thanks to yuppies (remember them?). And from a corporate standpoint, who would have thought that the Japanese would take on the likes of Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Volvo?
Perhaps Honda wasn’t taken seriously enough at the beginning, with their new brand, aimed at the U.S. and serving a purpose of creating a place for all those Honda owners to go once they wanted to move up with more luxury and some cushier features in their vehicles. Acura was meant to be the brand for those Honda owners to aspire to.
Meanwhile, there were some things brewing at two other corporations. Nissan and Toyota had ideas about keeping owners loyal too. It just took them a few more years to get their initial products out the door.
1989. Double whammy! Along came TWO new brands, around the same time. One teased us with commercials with trees in them. The other hit us in the jugular with pricing far below their core targeted rival, Mercedes.
1989 ES250
I remember a friend’s older sister buying a Lexus ES250 soon after introduction and saying “Twenty-one thousand dollars ….for a LEXUS!” She didn't know that the car was actually a Camry in disguise, hidden behind lots of luxurious features.
Keep your hands on the wheel. Part two is coming! Say Hello! There's thewebsite, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ ...I'll say Hi back.
