How Akio Toyoda chose to announce his plans to step down

Attempts by Toyota, one of Japan’s largest advertisers, to bypass traditional media are part of a global trend by large corporations, with Elon Musk dismantling Tesla’s PR department in favor of communicating via social media.

Thursday’s broadcast was also awkward by turns: Sato, the incoming CEO, was not introduced until nearly 25 minutes in. A video clip showed him and Toyoda speeding around a race track and laughing as their vehicle accelerated.

After almost an hour of scripted presentations and banter, the Toyota Times host turned to questions from reporters.

While Toyoda himself has become a much more accomplished public speaker over the years, the broadcast came over as “unfriendly and self-indulgent,” said Akio Yamaguchi, who runs crisis communications consultancy AccessEast.

Toyoda has increasingly appeared to eschew traditional media as the company fell out of favor with environmentalists who once lauded its green technology.

He also traced his distrust of the media to the critical coverage he faced during a vehicle recall crisis that began in 2009, just when he was taking over.

At a 2010 congressional hearing in Washington he went through a three-hour grilling by sometimes visibly irritated U.S. lawmakers. He remained stoic throughout, but afterwards broke into tears when speaking to dealers and employees.

He felt an “intense” loneliness and “abandoned” he recalled in a Japanese magazine interview in late 2021.

The Toyota Times also exclusively publishes the closely watched results of the company’s spring wage negotiations with its union.

Other interviewers favored by Toyoda include Matsuko Deluxe, a TV personality. One well known actor served as editor-in-chief until an allegation of sexual assault forced the automaker to pull a major advertising campaign.

When a self-driving vehicle hit a pedestrian at the Tokyo Paralympic Games village in 2021, Toyoda took to a live feed on the Instagram page of Toyota Times to explain, where he was interviewed by one of his journalists.

Other reporters were not able to ask questions.