Yet, this doesn't mean Toyota has done everything right. The way in which the carmaker managed the recall crisis has earned it a spot on the not-so-coveted Top 2010 PR Blunders, alongside British Petroleum and Amazon. The list was compiled by Fineman PR for the 16th time.
"If you look at what they did it was clear that they didn't really understand the magnitude of the issue and the potential PR risk," said Tim Calkins, clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University a while back.
So, what did they do? Well, it's more of a what they didn't do deal. Toyota knew about intended acceleration, and said nothing. When the news broke, Toyota tried to play it down. When it finally couldn't hide the magnitude of the problem, it settled.
As for BP and the National Public Radio, they have also been at the center of unwanted attention. BP was busy, for most of the year, spilling enough oil into the Gulf of Mexico to make the Deepwater Horizon incident the biggest environmental disaster in US history.
Amazon was blamed for profiting from pedophilia because it posted an author's self-published guide for pedophiles.
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