Advertising Age had a brief interview with Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines recently and one thing about it struck me quickly.  It’s a lesson many businesses could stand to learn.

When things got tough for Southwest, they spent more, not less, on advertising and marketing. 

It’s a lesson I learned myself more than 10 years ago when I was partners in a construction firm and new construction jobs dried up.  You don’t fold up, you go hunt the business even harder. 

It seems like an obvious thing but it really isn’t.  Just take a look around you and at what has happened with a great many businesses over the past 3 years.  The first reaction to bad times is to stop spending money . . . period.  People retrench and hunch down to try to withstand the storm about to hit. 

And a few others go and innovate.  With Southwest, it’s advertising but it is much more as well.  They innovate.  They look for smart savings.  They embrace change and they empower people to use good judgement in executing that change.  In the 1990’s, when fuel prices spiked as a result of the first Gulf War, Southwest pilots suddenly started requesting higher altitudes on their flights to the surprise of other airlines and air controllers.  In fact, they got downright aggressive about getting optimal altitudes for their flights.  Why?  Because it saved money. 

Now, among US airlines, Southwest is virtually the only one embracing the need to invest in GPS technology to be prepared for NextGen air traffic control.  Other airlines are making statements to the press about its expense and how the US government should pay for it.  Southwest has it, is implementing it and benefitting from it.  It saves them money now and it will save them more money in the future. 

When Boeing was designing the cockpit for the Next Generation 737 aircraft, Southwest (Boeing’s biggest customer for the 737) asked that the new flat panel cockpits be designed to emulate the “steam” gauges being used in their 737-200/300 fleet so that there would be no transition between the aircraft for its pilots.  Why?  Well, training was one reason but there was a better one underlying that:  Pilots would be able to seemely switch from aircraft to aircraft during their flight day without having to slow down and re-think what they were doing each time they took over a new aircraft.  That made turning flights quickly still doable.

What do you do when it gets tough?  Innovate and advertise.  That’s what Southwest does.

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