ANALYSIS:
Corporate Case Study
Southwest Airlines keeps PR course with flying colors
Written by Sherri
Deatherage Green
Published in PRWeek US, Jan. 26, 2004
From a new reality
TV series to its union negotiations, low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines keeps
a key stakeholder group - its employees - on its radar at all times.
Southwest Airlines threw big
employee parties on Jan. 5, though that’s nothing unusual for the low-fare
carrier, where managers keep confetti close at hand. The subject of the
celebration, however, was something daringly different – the debut of Southwest’s
own reality television show.
A&E’s documentary-like Airline
offers an unfiltered look at the workaday lives of Southwest staffers and their
customers in Chicago and Los Angeles. Management took the calculated risk of
granting a film crew access to its terminals because it wanted to showcase what
the company values most - employees and good customer service.
The corporate culture at Southwest
remains legendary. Chairman and cofounder Herb Kelleher and the airline’s
traditional underdog persona are key ingredients to the company’s esprit de
corps. But Southwest is no longer an underdog. In fact, it’s the only
consistently profitable airline since September 11. Yet with 35,000 employees,
and with Kelleher keeping quiet lately, corporate culture remains largely
intact, albeit with a few signs of wear.
Pioneer positioning
Industry experts predicted that
Southwest’s employee relations would falter when the company got too big, says
Dr. Adam Pilarski, SVP of Avitas, a Washington, DC-area airline analyst firm. “All
businesses follow three major constituencies – employees, customers and
financial backers,” he said. “Southwest has consistently said if you do the
first, keep employees happy, they will make customers happy, and that will
bring results – and by golly, it works.”
The underdog mentality dies hard,
though. On Southwest’s website, for example, Kelleher explains that it won’t
sell tickets through Orbitz because five of its competitors own the online
reservation site.
PR staff realize, however, that
they can’t paint Southwest as David forever, especially when its books reveal
the black ink of a Goliath. Amid competition from upstart imitators and newly
branded, low-fare subsidiaries of traditional airlines, Southwest positions
itself as a leader, a pioneer, even a missionary in affordable air travel.
“We are the reason people who used
to just fantasize about it can fly in this country,” said senior PR director Ed
Stewart, noting that few low-fare carriers choose to compete with Southwest
head-to-head in the airports it serves.
In fact, Southwest remains far
larger than other low-cost airlines. “They consider JetBlue sort of this cute
little relative,” said one aviation reporter.
Subtly digging at Ted, United’s
new lower-cost subsidiary, Stewart said, “You can call yourself Ned or Fred or
anything else, but you can’t duplicate the kind of people we have here at
Southwest Airlines.”
The boisterous Kelleher, of
course, is the person most intrinsically associated with Southwest. He and
partner Rollin King founded the Dallas-based company as a Texas intrastate
carrier. Southwest had to fight competitors in court first to get off the
ground, then to fly any further than Little Rock, but when it launches service
to Philadelphia in May, it will serve 60 cities in 31 states.
Kelleher’s gregarious personality
and personal touch helped keep the highly unionized workforce happy, but he
eventually ceded his CEO and president titles to longtime lieutenants Jim Parker
and Colleen Barrett, respectively.
As Southwest celebrated its 30th
anniversary in June 2001, its two new leaders afforded double the PR
opportunity. The airline’s PR team focused on positioning Parker – formerly the
company’s general counsel – as a business and financial expert. Barrett, who
began as Kelleher’s legal secretary and became a torchbearer of Southwest’s
culture, focused on people issues. September 11 cut their introduction period
short, but by the time reporters began writing about things other than
terrorism, Parker and Barrett had already become well-established leaders.
Meanwhile, Kelleher keeps an
intentionally low profile and devotes most of his time now to public affairs
issues. “When you have Herb walking through the room, his shadow is so much
bigger than everyone else’s,” said Stewart. “To his credit, he recognized that.
He’s very selective about when he comes out.”
Kelleher, who grew up near
Philadelphia, made an appearance when Southwest announced plans to serve that
city, its first new destination since 2001.
Those who argue that a strong
culture requires a charismatic leader wonder whether Southwest’s will survive
Kelleher. Change is inevitable, but executives like Barrett keep the culture
ingrained, notes Dallas Baptist University management professor Dr. Dave
Arnott, who featured Southwest in his book Corporate Cults: The Insidious
Lure of the All-Consuming Organization. “Certainly, compared to any other
organization in America, I think they have a more carefully refined and more
narrowly defined culture,” Arnott said.
The show goes on
Keeping employees happy, however,
may be getting a bit harder. Mediation talks continue with its flight
attendants union, which hired its own PR firm and undertook a humor-tinged
informational picketing campaign during the summer.
Southwest weathered tense union
negotiations before and probably will again, says Chicago Tribune
journalist John Schmeltzer. “They are going to have a harder time going
forward,” he said. “As pilots and flight attendants age, they are going to
expect more.... As [Southwest] ages, all of a sudden it becomes a legacy
airline.”
Unlike some other airlines,
however, Southwest doesn’t portray its unions as adversaries. “We want a
contract as soon as possible because we believe our flight attendants deserve a
pay increase,” corporate communications VP Ginger Hardage said after union
members shoved flyers under guest-room doors in a hotel where she was speaking.
Early episodes of Airline,
however, reveal no hints of employee/management friction. In one, three bubbly
flight attendants entertain passengers with songs and games on a flight to Las
Vegas. Other subjects include smelly, overweight, drunken, and/or disgruntled
passengers. Viewers may sympathize with customers instead of employees in a few
segments, but the overall depiction of Southwest is positive.
Granada Productions, the British
company that brought English viewers the original Airline series, were
spurned by larger, transcontinental air carriers before reaching an agreement
with Southwest for A&E’s new U.S. version. But Southwest had reservations
as well. “It came pretty close to ending up in file No. 13,” Stewart said. The
company signed on because the project got positive marks from easyJet, the
low-cost British airline featured in the long-running UK program.
Southwest doesn’t pay or get paid
for its participation in Airline, and the crew is allowed to film
anything the Transportation Safety Administration allows. Southwest’s PR staff
sees the rough edits and may correct any factual errors in voiceover scripts,
says PR director Linda Rutherford. Ten half-hour episodes initially were
slated, but A&E liked the initial footage so much, it ordered another
eight.
PR staffers served as escorts for
the crews but stayed clear of the cameras. Stewart says they almost had too
much fun. “We had a hard time getting our escorts back here to Dallas,” he noted.
“They wanted to tack on extra days.”
Southwest’s decision to grant the
film crew open access floored industry observers, but it illustrates a level of
openness that reporters say the airline has always displayed in providing
information and access to executives.
While most agree the show is a PR
coup for Southwest, early reviews of the program’s entertainment value were
mixed at best. The New York Times panned it, and Variety reviewer
Phil Gallo called it “half infomercial, half training tape.”
“It’s not going to become the next
Seinfeld, which was also a show about nothing but kind of funny,”
predicts Pilarski, who thought Airline lacked a necessary element of
drama.
Regardless of whether the series’
U.S. version survives its first season, the program is already a hit with
Southwest’s PR staff, among others.
“I can’t count the number of
companies that would love that kind of exposure,” said the Tribune's
Schmeltzer.
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PR contacts
Corporate comms VP Ginger Hardage
Senior PR director Ed Stewart
PR director Linda Rutherford
Employee comms director Tracie Martin
Director of legislative awareness Susan Goodman
Senior IR director Tammy Romo
Governmental affairs VP Ron Ricks
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