Southwest Airlines: Perks and Quirks of the Airline's Comm Strategy

When the latest issue of Texas Monthly, a monthly magazine that celebrates everything Texas, showed up in my mailbox this week, the cover story grabbed my attention: “Luv & War: How Southwest Airlines Battled the Worst Decade in Airline History – and Conquered the Skies.” Growing up in Texas, Southwest Airlines was often the preferred airline for short jumps across the state. San Antonio to Dallas, a drive that would take 5 or more hours, was just a quick 45 minute hop. To Houston was even shorter: just 35 minutes in the air. I would always take Southwest back home for weekends in college, going from Lubbock to San Antonio for less than $100 round trip. The Southwest Airlines brand has grown to be as iconic as Imperial Sugar or the Dallas Cowboys (Gwyne, 2012).

Southwest’s communication strategy is one of the major reasons they have been successful in its 40+ year history when every other major airline in the country has filed for bankruptcy (Gwyne, 2012). The airline president and CEO, Gary Kelly, is ever-present in employees’ lives, from showing up to announce the annual “Kick Tail” awards to dressing like a member from the band Kiss at the annual Halloween party to having a say in what the company’s 160-member culture committee does.

But Southwest’s history hasn’t always been fun and games with a culture filled with parties, pride and hot pants, which is what the flight attendants (they called themselves hostesses) wore on all flights in the 1970s. In 1979, the Wright Amendment was passed, “which severely restricted Southwest’s flights from its home base of (Dallas) Love Field.” Founder Herb Kelleher quickly turned the airline into as much of a cause as a means of getting around, and the company adopted LUV as its stock symbol on the New York Stock Exchange (Gwyne, 2012). Kelleher rallied the employees behind the culture revolution and the airline was blowing and going until the morning of September 11, 2001.

The airline industry seemed to have the bottom drop out of it overnight after 9/11. In a new era of airport security, rising fuel costs and extra fees, Southwest tried to be the anomaly. The airline communicated to customers that they could cancel their reservations for no penalty, unlike what every other major carrier in the US was doing, if they didn’t feel safe flying. A well publicized event that happened the morning of 9/11 also has a positive effect on the airline: the crew of a flight that was forced to land then subsequently grounded in Grand Rapids, MI, unloaded all bags off the plane, retuned them to passengers, bussed them to the nearest train station and bought all of them train tickets back to their homes.

In 2002, Southwest found some more choppy air: it began a two-year negotiation with its flight attendant union, who wanted better work rules, benefits and compensation (Gwyne, 2012). The union held the “summer of tough luv” where they took their cause to airports across the country. When an agreement was reached two years later and the results shared with the employees, a sea of scattered cheers and boos could be heard in the room (Gwyne, 2012).

Southwest has also been strategic with the way it handles fees. Southwest has always been the airline without fees, so when all other major carriers began charging for bags, they came out with a new ad campaign to highlight the fact that they don’t. Real employees bared their chests and painted “bags fly free” on their skin like frat boys at a college football game to get the message across. And it worked. Southwest also strategically communicates it does not charge reservation change fees or even cancellation fees. This worked, Kelleher said, because they trust their customers and told them the truth about what they were actually doing (Gwyne, 2012).

And now finally, rising fuel costs have put the brakes on Southwest enormous profits. So what’s the solution: look into new markets. Southwest recently purchased AirTran and has begun picking up some of its routes to Mexico and the Caribbean. Kelleher believes the future profits of Southwest will come to this expanded route network (Gwyne, 2012).

Southwest subscribes to the notion that “when  companies  take  a  strategic  approach  to  communication, communication  becomes  integral  to  the  formulation  and implementation  of strategy (Argenti, Howell and Beck, 2005, p. 84). The role communications takes at SWA is a basis of why the company has been so successful over the years, having only posted an annual loss the first two years the airline was operating (Gwyne, 2012). Its CEO is a driver of strategic communication, and its strategy has a multi-level approach, one factor Argenti, Howell and Beck say is imperative (2005).

How will Southwest fare in the future? Nobody knows. But if the company keeps its current strategy in place, something tells me they’ll do just fine. The ticket prices might not be the lowest in the industry anymore, but where else can you get a flight attendant to sing happy birthday over the intercom, rap the safety instructions to you or act like they genuinely enjoy their job? Southwest, that’s where. 


References:

Gwynne, S.C. Luv and war at 30,000 feet: Texas Monthly, 2012 (vol. 40).

Argenti, P., Howell, R., Beck, K. (2005). The Strategic Communication Imperative, MIT Sloan     Management Review, 46 #3, pp. 83-89