Southwest Airlines Does It Again With “Transfarency”
I am a big fan of Southwest Airlines. Despite the skirmishes that happened between two passengers this week from LA to San Francisco, I am still a big believer of their philosophy and marketing programs.
They are a company with “heart”. So much so that they’ve actually painted their heart logo on the bottom of each of their planes to demonstrate that they care about their customers. When they launched the original campaign in September 2014, I wrote a blog post that you can see here http://bit.ly/1RkbhUK, which discusses their mission vision and value, and how they engage all their employees around a singular purpose.
This week, Southwest Airlines unveiled a new advertising campaign called “transfarency” that focuses on its low fares and transparency in fees. It is a made-up word, which to me, are generally corny, but in this case it makes sense and is credible coming from Southwest.
Kevin Krone, chief marketing officer for the Dallas-based airline said in announcing the new campaign, “It’s time to remind people that there’s a different airline out there.” He explained the new word like this: Its transparency + the fare = transfarency.
The ad asks the question “when did paying for airfare, become so unfair? At Southwest, we do things differently. It means we don’t dream up ways to trick you into paying more. It means respect. Because we just don’t fly you, we like you.” This VO plays over imagery showing their heart Southwest logo throughout the spot.
There have been lots of efforts to combine words and establish new definitions and advertising. Remember “framily,” a compression of “friends” and “family,” from Sprint, and “turketarian,” a mash-up of “turkey” and “vegetarian,” from Butterball. Or what about “Manwich”, “Swiffer”, “Jazzercise” and “Renuzit"?
All these examples were designed to draw attention to a specific ad or product in a comical and clever way. However, they lack the heart, compassion, and vision in the core value of the companies they represent.
“Transfarency” is different and is credible. It basically challenges all the other airlines, like Spirit Airlines who nickel and dime you to print out a ticket, carry-on luggage, and a myriad of other charges that should be free and transparent from the get-go. It says the passenger is not going to be treated like baggage. They will be honest and caring.
As recent events have shown, Southwest has internalized and promoted these values of honesty and transparency. Last week, technical glitches in the Southwest check-in system forced delays on over 800 flights around the country. In the last year, technical malfunctions have been a bane to the industry, with United and American Airlines experiencing crashes in their systems in July and September respectively. Southwest’s management team got ahead of the issue, immediately releasing a statement saying, "It's never too early to say thank you and to extend our apologies, and we want to share those sentiments both with our hard-working employees and our loyal and understanding customers." If they hadn’t developed an articulated vision of who they are and clarity of purpose; they could not have been able to be as honest and transparent as they were. It all starts (employee engagement, brand advocacy and branding) with clarity of purpose, openness and a commitment to your employees and your customers.
Keep it up Southwest. Your approach is refreshing and changing the attitudes of how travel should be for customers and the industry. I hope all of your competitors take note and follow your lead.
What do you think of the new campaign?