I just read an article in AdAge by Patrick Sarkissian with the provocative title, “Why Metrics Are Killing Creativity in Advertising.”  The basic point of the article was summed up in the subtitle: “When Marketing Decisions Are Based on Numbers, We Lose the Desire to Be Creative.” The author seems to assume that creativity applies only to ideas and not to numbers. If I’m reading him correctly, I believe he is wrong and that his clients are missing out.

All eyes are on Toyota right now and not for reasons the company appreciates. A series of faults have led to the recall of a wide variety of car models. Sensing blood in the water, Toyota’s American competitors are seeking to lure people away from the Japanese brand. Which companies are likely to benefit the most?

Emboldened by Toyota’s problems, American rivals are offering disgruntled Toyota owners cash discounts to trade in their old cars for new domestic models. Among these players is Ford, a company that claimed for years that quality was “Job Number 1,” yet watched people continue to flock to imports with better reputations for quality.

According to the new TrustR ranking, last year Toyota was one of the most trusted and recommended brands in the United States. Now a series of recalls involving a number of different models has undermined that trust and plunged Toyota into the media spotlight. Slow to respond to the mounting crisis, the company has done a less than stellar job in handling the negative PR. The question is, what should Toyota’s management team do now?

The fact that a car manufacturer has to recall a model is nothing new. Cars have always been innately complex products and consumers accept that things may go wrong. The long-term effects of recalls are usually determined by how well they are managed.

The news that Wal-Mart is dumping some well-known brand names in favor of its own will no doubt send another round of shivers through the U.S. consumer packaged goods world. (Click here for story.) Where will it all end? Is no brand safe? I believe the answer is the same as it’s always been: Strong brands, the ones shoppers really desire, have little to fear. And fewer brands on the shelf may go some way to re-establishing consumer’s satisfaction with the brands they do buy.

Recently I had the opportunity to compare a number of management dashboards, and what they all had in common was an excess of metrics focused on past performance at the expense of measures that described future potential. That seems a strange way to manage a business, particularly if it is one that relies on the strength of its brands to turn a profit.