The "Welcome Aboard" ads, from TBWA LA--which in itself is a departure from longstanding creative agency partner GSD&M--broke last month, with the first spot running during NCAA coverage. They'll continue into next month. I caught up with Southwest VP and CMO Kevin Krone--promoted in February from VP-marketing, sales and distribution--to discuss the ads, their grown-up look and feel, and the grown-up airline behind them.
What are the new ads meant to reflect?
Southwest is a well-known brand and has been around in the marketplace for over 40 years, however in the last six to seven years we’ve actually done quite a bit of remodeling to the airline. [Our customers] got it, they understood it and all things we were doing to improve our products and services. But you felt there were other parts of the population that had old, and in some cases, really old memories of Southwest. So the point of this campaign was to make sure our current customers who love us, make sure the message is true to them, yet at the same time make a really bold statement to those who don’t always think about Southwest--and that it's evolved from the memories they might hold of it.
How is this different from what Southwest has done creatively in the past?
For one thing, we have not traditionally done anthems, which is what we lead off here with. And we’ve not done 60-second anthemic spots. Those are two big changes for how we would traditionally market Southwest. The perspective and cinematography has a different look and feel.
Why was that important?
Because of what we’re trying to do—get the folks who were familiar with Southwest but who think they know what Southwest was all about and had concluded that they didn’t want to fly on Southwest to think differently about the airline. We needed a different tone and feel to grab attention …and talk about the new products and services and what they may provide for you.
What’s business been like?
The year started off in an interesting way. We are obviously part of the larger U.S. economy, and everything impacting that does have relation to us. [Given] all the stakeholders in this brand…we always want to make sure we’re careful about what we do, and so far have a lot of good support for [the new ads].
Overall climate of the travel/airline industry as you see it?
Interesting time with all the news going on with macroeconomy as well as what's going on in the industry regarding consolidation. Demand is pretty strong for travel.
So you've shifted from a focus on leisure to business travelers? When did you do that?
A lot of people view Southwest as a leisure carrier because of our low fares, but our DNA is about being a business airline. Back when we started we’d serve a market with very high frequency and low fares, for example, 20 trips a day between Dallas and Houston. We’ve grown over the years and entered more long-distance markets. It's harder to do that high-frequency schedule, so I understand why folks think Southwest is more leisure but we have always felt and had a pretty large percentage of business travelers. But I don’t feel like it’s a dramatic shift from leisure to business because we’ve always felt like we’ve been in the business game.
How have you been affected by the new, disruptive competition in your industry?
I would say Southwest is still playing the role of being a disruptor—for example, the rest of the industry thinks it's appropriate to charge bag fees and we don’t think it’s the right way to do it. That’s an example of marching to a different drummer.
How do they affect us? It really depends, depending on the airline. For the most part, there is not a lot of overlap with those airlines. Right now, the impact is pretty limited but the other side of the coin is that because of Southwest’s size, there’s so much more we can offer people. That’s something these upstarts can't offer because they’re still so new.
News reports indicate that the ads, by not mentioning your 'Bags Fly Free' program, suggest you might start charging baggage fees. Any truth to it?
No, the objective was we really needed to find a way to break through. You have limited media dollars to spend and we had to [make a bold statement].
How would you characterize your priorities as CMO?
We have an incredible brand and we have to be thoughtful about protecting it and enhancing it. It’s a very difficult industry. Competition is very stiff. Want to make sure living up to customer, employee and shareholder expectations. When it comes to decisions that need to be made, we have to be sure we’re watching out for the customer and taking care of this jewel of a brand that we have in Southwest.
