The rough guide to marketing success used to be that you got what you paid for. No longer. While traditional “paid” media—such as television commercials and print advertisements—still play a major role, companies today can exploit many alternative forms of media. Consumers passionate about a product may create “earned” media by willingly promoting it to friends, and a company may leverage “owned” media by sending e-mail alerts about products and sales to customers registered with its Web site. The way consumers now approach the process of making purchase decisions means that marketing’s impact stems from a broad range of factors beyond conventional paid media.

    Paid and owned media are controlled by marketers promoting their own products. For earned media, such marketers act as the initiator for users’ responses. But in some cases, one marketer’s owned media become another marketer’s paid media—for instance, when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on its Web site. We define such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong that other organizations place their content or e-commerce engines within that environment. This trend, which we believe is still in its infancy, effectively began with retailers and travel providers such as airlines and hotels and will no doubt go further. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has created BabyCenter, a stand-alone media property that promotes complementary and even competitive products. Besides generating income, the presence of other marketers makes the site seem objective, gives companies opportunities to learn valuable information about the appeal of other companies’ marketing, and may help expand user traffic for all companies concerned.

    The same dramatic technological changes that have provided marketers with more (and more diverse) communications choices have also increased the risk that passionate consumers will voice their opinions in quicker, more visible, and much more damaging ways. Such hijacked media are the opposite of earned media: an asset or campaign becomes hostage to consumers, other stakeholders, or activists who make negative allegations about a brand or product. Members of social networks, for instance, are learning that they can hijack media to apply pressure on the businesses that originally created them.

    If that happens, passionate consumers would try to persuade others to boycott products, putting the reputation of the target company at risk. In such a case, the company’s response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve has been steep. Toyota Motor, for example, alleviated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly on sites such as Twitter and the social-news site Digg.

答案精析：根据题干中的Toyota Motor可定位至原文最后一段最后一句话。该句指出，丰田汽车通过relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-media response campaign（相对快速、步调协调的社交媒体回应活动）减轻了汽车召回危机的损害。可见丰田公司有效应对了被劫持媒体，故A选项为正确答案。

错项排除：由原文可知，劝说他人抵制产品的是passionate consumers（热心顾客），不是丰田公司，B选项属于张冠李戴，故错误。C选项的supportive在原文并无依据，故错误。丰田公司是作为应对被劫持媒体的事例，而不是利用被劫持媒体，故D选项错误。

长难句分析：Toyota Motor, for example, alleviated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly on sites such as Twitter and the social-news site Digg.

本句主干是Toyota Motor,…, alleviated some of the damage，为主谓宾结构，for example是插入语，from its recall crisis为地点状语，earlier this year 是时间状语，with…campaign是方式状语。which引导的非限制性定语从句修饰campaign，对其进行解释说明，其中不定式to engage with consumers为后置定语修饰efforts，表明努力的举措；on sites是地点状语，表明举措的地点；such as Twitter and the social-news site Digg为后置定语修饰sites，对地点进行举例。

句意为：例如，今年早些时候发生的召回危机中，丰田公司以相对快速、步调一致的社交媒体回应活动，减轻了汽车召回危机的损害，这些回应活动包括在推特和社会新闻网站掘客等网站上直接与客户进行交流。