One of Toyota's ads features assembly line worker Bridie Tucker, who says: “If I suspect a problem, I pull the Andon cord and the whole production line stops immediately, and it does not start again until the issue has been resolved.”
Tucker works on trim assembly at Toyota's factory in Burnaston, central England, which builds the Auris compact and the Avensis mid-sized models. She adds: “I have pulled it (the Andon cord) thousands of times and it's good because it makes everyone personally responsible for producing the highest quality car.”
The ads will be shown on BBC World and CNN in May and will appear in business newspapers as part of Toyota's image-rebuilding efforts. Toyota has already started running the ads in Germany and the UK. Similar actions in other key European markets such as France, Italy and Spain will follow in May and July.
“The campaign was inspired by our own people in manufacturing and in retail across Europe,” Andrea Formica, Toyota's head of sales and marketing in Europe told Automotive News Europe in a phone interview. “Their incredible passion, commitment to quality, safety for our customers is what has built our reputation. We want to show this human face of Toyota. The real, authentic Toyota,” he added.
The campaign's tagline is "Your Toyota is my Toyota.” Internally it is called “restore trust,” reflecting the company's objective of reassuring Toyota customers that every employee cares about the quality and safety of every customer's vehicle in the same way as if it was their own car.
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