Bad advertising? No advertising? No problem. Part 3.

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.