We’ve all been watching in fascination (or, horror – depending on your perspective) as one of the worlds most trusted brands has fallen. Not only has their myriad of problems sunk them almost overnight, but now you have the media “looking” for problems to pin on Toyota. Because we’ve all been watching this thing unravel, we know how it happened. The question now is how does Toyota get their brand back?

Toyota has already started the mea culpa process with commercials like this:

They’ve now started to harness social media as well. According to a post on Los Angeles Times Blog, Toyota has setup a branded channel on TweetMeme in partnership with Federated Media. It’s called Toyota Conversations and it’s essentially an aggegator of articles and web fodder about the brand. The LA Times articles seems to indicate that it was mostly including “positive sentiment” in the feed. However, when I looked it I actually saw a feed weighted more heavily on pieces critical of Toyota.

Is this the right approach?

I think it is. Look, no amount of spin is going to make this go away right now. Instead, Toyota has taken the initiative to aggregate it, acknowledge it and allow real conversation around it. While allowing a real stream of sentiment, Toyota is allowing all viewpoints – mostly negative – in to their “conversation,” but they are also able to brand it correctly. Take a look at the Toyota Conversations page and you see a section called “What We’re Doing” that allows the company to clearly state their message. There is also a link to a recent episode of Digg Dialogg which features Toyota’s US President, Jim Lentz. Additionally there are links to Toyota’s presence on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Toyota’s brand is a mess right now, but they’re being as transparent about it as they can be. By taking this approach, not only are they laying their cards on the table, but they’re also saying “let us have it and after you do, we want to tell you how we plan to make it right.” Under the circumstances I think this is a genius approach to making lemonade out of lemons.

What do you think? Is this the right approach? What could they be doing better? I’d love your feedback in the comments.