Bad advertising? No advertising? No problem. Part 3.
July 14, 2015
By Gonzalo López Martí LMMIAMI.COM
- How come so many brands out there manage to carve a solid following and healthy sales despite their seemingly lackluster advertising?
- In other words: it is not unusual for bad advertising to work as well or even better than good advertising.
- Southwest Airlines.
- Talk about an anomaly.
- Consistently profitable throughout the decades.
- Immune and oblivious to the rollercoaster cycles of volatility that hit the industry every couple years.
- Let’s remember that 2big2fail American Airlines declared bankruptcy a few years ago and it had to be salvaged by creditors, unions and Uncle Sam.
- American f*****g Airlines joining Panam and Braniff in the aircraft junkyards of Arizona.
- That would’ve been an embarrassment.
- Nevertheless, Southwest thrives.
- Southwest, a regional player one would expect to be way more vulnerable and terminally exposed to the usual turbulence that sends so many airlines nosediving every decade or so (all puns intended).
- Well, no.
- Southwest is one of the best performing stocks of the last 40 years.
- Not only in the air transport industry.
- It is a top performer across the board!
- Last year alone, its stock price jumped close to 100%
- Have you seen its logo?
- It’s a joke: a multicolored heart!
- Their NYSE ticker is… LUV
- LUV!
- LOL
- Everything about Southwest, especially its ad campaigns, is a joke too: moronic vignettes straight out of a royalty free stock photography library circa 1996.
- A cult to braindead optimistic silliness.
- A company run by SpongeBob squarepants.
- Inexplicable?
- Course not.
- They are deliberately trying to be corny and camp in a category notorious by its self-importance and aloof coldheartedness.
- It is their strategy.
- (Proof is, their ad agency is a very respectable one: GSD&M out of Austin, Tejas)
- Still, their overall success is a business & marketing mystery which I’ve been trying to figure out for years.
- Maybe it’s because unions have been lenient to them.
- Maybe they operate in markets with organic demographic growth, allowing them to ride a healthy streak of year to year profitability.
- Who knows.
- All I know is the company is a winner despite the fact that its ad campaigns are self-deprecatingly ridiculous.