Toyota? Tiger Woods?

Toyota is in the news quite a bit recently and I am sure it is not quite the publicity that the company is looking for. Toyota seems to have recalls and receive unfavorable press coverages in the last month more than they ever did in the past 20 years. The seeming unshakable reputation and public image really took a beating.

Strangely enough, somehow in my mind, I connected the Toyota situation with what happened to Tiger Woods recently. I am sure most of you know what happened to Tiger, and the destruction to his image and reputation. Even though these are two totally unrelated situations, what struck me is that the “mystique”, “can’t do no wrong”, “unbeatable” images of both are severely damaged.

A good reputation and subsequent public trust of a brand take many years of effort and resources to build. Once they are established, they can be power forces in the market place and can be very profitable. However, just when things are going well, we all seem to have the tendency to relax and become comfortable with what we are doing. We also mistakenly think that we are invincible and we can get away with anything we do without the dedication and diligence that we used to have. As we learn from both cases recently, the reputation can be gone quickly and the public trust eroded overnight.

Will Toyota and Tiger Woods get back to the status they had before? May be, maybe not, only time will tell. But the certainty is that there will be a lot of re-dedicated efforts and costs required to get back to the pinnacle. In a business world, when you are trying to rebuild what you had before, the door is wide open for the competitors to come in and make life very difficult for you! I used to work for GM, and I still remember the X-Car brake issues, the look-alike cars in the 80’s and the damages those problems had done to the company. The biggest problem is the lost of good reputation and public trust. I saw the struggles that GM had to regain consumer confidence in the company. With great products that GM has in the past decade, it is still an uphill battle just to convince people to get GM a try.

So it is abundantly obvious that a brand reputation in the market place is precious to protect, after years of work to gain the brand reputation. It makes me a lot more appreciative about the quality process that Mitsubishi goes through to ensure its hardware products are reliable and dependable. I know many people who may not know much about the features and functions of Mitsubishi automation products, but they seem to know the quality reputation that Mitsubishi has. I think I will stop questioning why the engineers at Nagoya need to do all the “seemingly over-board” noise testing, environmental testing, etc. It is worth the effort to protect the reputation that you have!