Southwest Airlines Shows What a “Brand” Really Is
- Posted by Jim Tobin on February 1st, 2008
filed in Advertising, Marketing |
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I flew Southwest Airlines from Raleigh to Los Angeles this week. It’s been a while since I flew the LUV airline. I’ve always admired them because of the way they understand what a brand is.
To paraphrase from “Brogan on Branding”:
A brand is not a logo. It is the totality of all thoughts and feelings that people associate with your organization.
Southwest gets that. A brand is a belief system, an experience, and it exists for better or worse regardless of your marketing. Marketing can and should support it, enhance it and promote it, but the organization has to live it.
One simple thing a flight attendant said brought it all back to me. Here’s basically what she said:
“We don’t have cleaning crews that pick-up between flights here at Southwest. It’s just the flight attendants. So if you could help us out and gather any trash in your area, we’ll come pick it up now. That will help us keep costs down and get the next flight out as quickly as possible.”
Wow. That’s so simple. Ask me nicely. Explain the benefits to me, and make it easy for me. And, best of all, be human.
That’s what Southwest always strives to be: human and efficient, plus fun.
THAT, my friends, is what branding is all about.