DETROIT -- When bloggers write smack about Toyota, Bruce Ertmann is there to read every word and, in some cases, respond. As corporate manager of consumer-generated media at the Torrance, Calif.-based automaker, Ertmann constantly trolls the Web to see what people are saying. This includes both the gray anonymity or the way-too-public blogger world, and not just the good and the bad, but also the ugly. Although other car companies also have people who track and write blogs, Ertmann's title is believed to be the first in the U.S. auto trade.

Studies show that up to 90% of consumers believe these word-of-mouth forums for purchase decisions, and more people are researching products and services online before buying or using them. For these and other reasons, Ertmann spends his day digesting and disseminating the opinions consumers/critics have about Toyota. Ertmann also oversees and contributes to (along with others at the company) Toyota's first blog site, http://blogs.toyota.com, which launched in June. He is cautious though, especially in the wake of the recent blogger scandal in which John Mackey, co-founder and CEO at natural/organic grocery retailer Whole Foods Market, blogging under the alias "rahodeb," questioned why anyone would buy stock in Wild Oats Markets, a smaller rival, and even suggested that Wild Oats would go bankrupt. The bloggings became public when Whole Foods revealed that it was acquiring Wild Oats.

However, that has not stopped Ertmann from contributing such blog entries as his response to the news in July that Al Gore III, son of the former U.S. vice president, had been stopped on the San Diego Freeway for speeding at about 100 mph in his Toyota Prius. "We don't advocate traveling at 100 mph on our nation's highways, or anywhere for that matter in any of our products, but we've also heard from some of our Prius owners that say it's kind of nice to know the car is not a slug at all but has the power to move fast if needed. Just what is the top speed of a Prius? It's actually 103 mph. Buy a Prius—but obey the law."

Ertmann took time from blogging to speak with Brandweek senior reporter Steve Miller.

Brandweek: Why did Toyota create this position?

Bruce Ertmann: We had been using vendors to help us with our media analysis, both print and electronic. But it became just a clipping service, and we really just outgrew it. We knew we had to do a better job of going deeper because the consumer generated content was so pervasive; it seemed to be having some impact on companies, enough that we needed to do a bit more. Not to eavesdrop or in a Big Brother way, but we were listening to our consumers in a very traditional manner, using dealer surveys and so on. But here is this whole world of dialogue going on, talking about us 24/7, and it's out there for the taking. We brought in a different vendor [Nielsen's Buzz Metrics] to help us. They met some of the specific needs we had to help us understand how we can utilize the media we got.



BW: What do you do?

BE: My office has a bank of 16 monitors and I sit in here, surf the Internet and drink 10 gallons of coffee a day. No, not really. Actually I have one computer, although I do spend a fair amount of time in the Internet, although not my entire day. I'd say I spend about 30% of my day there, which would include management of the Toyota blog and monitoring other blogs. My role is to integrate the use of consumer generated media into other areas of our corporate communications. For example, we work with marketing, using the information I might get to expand our audience, even for traditional pr events. We are broadening these to include influential bloggers and other media groups. We move in a lot of directions.



BW: Do you have a specific case in which the blog aided marketing?

BE: When we had the Tundra launch, we knew we were going into this very competitive market that could get nasty. And it did. There were others who were developing videos to point out weaknesses, or what they claimed were weaknesses, and put them on their blogs, or were talking about them in their postings. Now, we can be aware of this quickly and gather a lot of factual information about the product, produce a fact sheet and create a separate blog that is a fact sheet and use it as a communication tool to help dealers. It's one more way we can stay up on things going around, and the blog is a great tool to get the facts straight.



BW: What sites do you monitor?

BE: Autoblog, jalopnik, auto extremist, some of the enthusiast sites, the Prius chat stuff. Most of our popular models have at least one enthusiast site. I check our own site, too. There are Toyota groups on MySpace, which I wasn't aware of until recently. We don't spend much time watching those. And I generally don't worry much about the sites that are press only. I'm mostly concerned with consumers.



BW: How do consumers know that people posting to your blog site aren't employees?

BE: We created a policy here, designed to help our associates when they participate in other blogs to avoid doing what the Whole Foods guy did. That was one person's behavior. I'd be more concerned if we had employees going to other sites and writing comments taking the position of the company. Our blog is meant to be less formal, less horn tooting and more transparent. I try to write posts the way consumers talk.



BW: Are there pitfalls to knowing every twitch of the consumer?

BE: Yes, you can know too much. But you have to filter out a good portion of discussions. Toyota is a well-known brand, of course, and there are topics that involve Toyota all the time. But I think one of the things we want to look for is some rumor that might get out there, something that is just not accurate. CGM has this ability to spread like wildfire, which is fine if it's good, but if it is inaccurate or scandalous, it can do damage so we need to be on top of that. Which is when we can turn to the blog.



BW: With this emphasis on consumer-generated media, are live focus groups less important?

BE: I don¹t think so, but I would see that there could be more focus group work going online. I know that Verizon Wireless does this. I was at a seminar recently for people who do what I do. They created a closed Intranet site for 50 customers or owners that they selected and they interact with management online. We have also developed a proprietary database that shows us to categorize by subject, key word, and name, anything we need. We have a high-profile executive, for example, and I don¹t think they are really paranoid, but if there is a discussion on the Internet that isn’t very flattering, we can pay attention to it. But mostly we use it for product discussions.



BW: Should every company have someone like you?

BE: I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to know what is being said about their brand in this expanding consumer generated media world. It’s a rich source of information and when it is used right, it can’t be beat. One problem being uncovered is when a company says, “Oh, man, we have to be part of this consumer-generated world,” and gets in without understanding or what I call a code of conduct. We aren’t consumers and when we drop in, we can’t pretend we are. Look at Wal-Mart, which created a blog that was supposed to have customers weighing in, but actually used vendors. That will be sniffed out very quickly.

BE: My office has a bank of 16 monitors and I sit in here, surf the Internet and drink 10 gallons of coffee a day. No, not really.