Southwest-Behind Every Seat

SOUTHWEST - BEHIND EVERY SEAT

It’s a truism that behind every journey there is a story. This insight forms the basis of Southwest’s latest marketing campaign entitled ‘Behind Every Seat.’

Passenger stories, 175 to be exact, have been collected for the campaign, some of which have been incorporated into a TV ad campaign.

The launch ad ‘vignette’ looks at a series of characters and personalities. This ranges from a sports coach motivating his team to two new parents who have just adopted a child. On the ad, a seat number hovers over every person (3D, 14C etc).

The ad in turn links back to a microsite featuring 175 seats on one of Southwest’s newly introduced Boeing 737 Max-8 jets that are due to enter service over the course of this month.

Clicking on some of the seats gives you a passenger story. It’s a great idea, but as in practice producing 175 films all at once would have both been logistically hard as well as expensive, some of the seats (e.g. 12C, 12D, 13A, 13C and 13D) actually

feed into the same narrative (that of the sports team featured in the ad). However that does mean there’s scope to develop more of these stories over time.

The airline created additional buzz around the campaign through the Adventure Giveaway, a scavenger hunt that sent fans running around ten Southwest cities for the opportunity to win a travel story of a lifetime. Some of the winners appear as one of the 175 ‘seats ’on the Southwest micro-site.

The thinking of the campaign is twofold. First of all, there is the opportunity to humanize the brand. As Ryan Green, Southwest’s vice president and chief marketing officer said, “this campaign is an opportunity for us to remind the world that there is a personal reason someone chose to fly Southwest Airlines.”

Secondly, the campaign underpins Southwest’s on-going ‘transfarency’ message which talks up different features such as not being charged to change your flight or check in a bag. The overall campaign was developed by Austin (Texas) advertising agency GSD&M.

KEY TAKE-AWAY

This is a great campaign that’s effective for three reasons. First of all the stories underpin some of the airline’s ‘transfarency’ messages. Secondly, it reminds everyone that travel is ultimately about people. And finally, it is scaleable.

As we mentioned, only some of the individual passenger stories have so far been developed. With every story being a PR and social media opportunity, it means Southwest can get a lot of additional mileage from this campaign over the coming months.