Toyota Uses Digg To Solicit Opinion On Recalls

Jim Lentz of Toyota

Toyota will broadcast an interview on Digg that gives community members an opportunity to ask questions about the recalls stemming from sudden-acceleration problems on some cars. The live stream set to air Monday will run on Digg Dialogg.

The recent controversy surrounding the Toyota vehicle recalls prompted the automaker to take the issue to Digg, crowdsourcing community members to find out what's on their minds.

Jim Lentz, president and chief operating officer at Toyota Motor Sales USA, will answer the Digg community's top questions when he sits down with Digg to provide perspective on what happened, what they're doing about it and what consumers need to know about the recall that would cost the automaker more than the estimated $2 billion.

"This is an effort to provide consumers an opportunity to ask us questions they may have about the situation," says Doug Frisbie, national social media and marketing integration manager at Toyota Motor Sales, USA. The Digg platform is the ideal platform for us to do that."

Frisbie says Lentz chatted on Twitter with consumers earlier in the week, answering about 14 questions, but Toyota wants to provide an additional platform to answer more.

Questions from consumers tend to reach deeper into specific topics, Frisbie says. "We were impressed with the depth and focus of the questions." he says. "It has helped us shape some of our more traditional efforts, such as FAQs, as well as other social media platforms."

People can log on to Digg and submit questions from Friday through Monday morning. The interview will stream live through the Digg Dialogg platform at 2 p.m. PST. Lentz will answer the top 10 questions that get Digg to the top of the list.

Digg Dialogg's crowdsourcing format allows people to vote up the questions based on Diggs. The Lentz interview is part of a series that began during the Democratic National Convention. Since the beginning, Digg has run about 15 interviews, from Nancy Pelosi to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Google's Marissa Mayer to Virgin's Richard Branson.

Although Toyota continues to reach out to traditional media, the company believes the missing element remains the direct communication with consumers. And while brands have embraced social media to promote messages and build direct conversations with consumers, Toyota's interview signals a shift in the ways that technology can support companies during a crisis.

Mike Maser, Digg chief strategy officer, says brands that monitor thousands of inputs streaming on other social media sites may not have the ability to sift through the garbage to find the most important points. In Digg, he says, humans create the filter based on attitudes, so at the end of the question-taking process there's no mistake about what people want to know.

"We expect the hundreds of questions already asked will turn into thousands, as we head into the weekend," Maser says. "This has the potential to make news and give the 40 million people using the site a chance to shape the conversation."

Digg provides the technology platform for Toyota, along with a bit of data, such as the number of questions asked and retweets, but analytics tools tied to back-end systems that would provide insight into what the person who asked the question might have been reading prior to submitting the question could come later this year. The analytics might include user influence and ad targeting to let brands know how they are perceived on Digg.

If the format sounds vaguely familiar, go back about a week or so to when Steve Grove, head of News and Politics at YouTube, interviewed U.S. President Barack Obama after allowing the YouTube community to submit and vote on questions to ask in a live streaming interview.

Watch the interview via Digg here:

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