• by Tanya Gazdik , June 2, 2009

Southwest Airlines has launched a new ad campaign encouraging customers to travel despite the current economic recession.

With the tagline -- "Grab Your Bag. It's On" -- the campaign encourages customers to move forward, get back out there, and keep flying. One upbeat spot shows quick cuts of different people saying "it's on," and ends with passengers and a pilot on a Southwest flight saying the line. It ends with the narrator saying: "We don't fly around tough times. How about you?"

Creative includes five TV spots, print, radio, online, and in-airport components that are currently are scheduled to run through August. Southwest Airlines Chairman, President, and CEO Gary Kelly -- along with Southwest employees and customers -- are featured in the commercials, which will air on morning talk shows, the evening news and sporting events, including the NBA Finals. "It will run in other cable programming as well," says Southwest spokesperson Ashley Rogers. "We focus heavily on sports programming."

Unlike its last year-long campaign, which poked fun at other airlines for charging fees to check baggage, this campaign takes a more serious approach. "It's an image campaign to reflect what we hope is the view of the American public that it's kind of time to put the challenges and difficulties of the past year behind and get going," said Dave Ridley, Southwest's senior vice president of marketing, according to The Associated Press.

Although the company denies that the new ad strategy is due to a plan to start charging checked baggage fees, Morningstar analyst Basili Alukos said he thinks that it's likely the airline does have plans to do so. "Based on their last earnings call, I wouldn't be surprised if they went that route," he told Marketing Daily. "To me, the writing is on the wall. If all of your competitors are charging and you aren't, you're losing a revenue stream."

Alukos said he sees the campaign as an attempt to warm up to customers and acknowledge the recession so that the probable new fees will be put into context.

The campaign was created by Southwest's longtime advertising agency GSD&M in Austin, Texas. Southwest declined to say how much it will spend on the campaign. Last year, Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co. spent $199 million on advertising, or about 2% of its budget, according to the AP.

Says GSD&M Creative Director David Crawford: "At some point, we all come to the place where we say: 'You know, OK, enough is enough -- let's get on with it, pull up our boot straps, get back at it -- we've got to fix this ourselves.' And that's basically what this campaign is about: OK, grab your bags, it's on, we're done -- let's get back at it."

Southwest also has given its mobile site a facelift at http://mobile. southwest.com. Previously, Southwest mobile customers had the ability to check in for flights, cancel reservations, contact Southwest Airlines, and view Southwest's terms and conditions. Now, mobile customers can also book a flight, log on to their Rapid Rewards frequent flier account, view schedules, and check flight status.

On Tuesday, the airline announced that its phone reservation system is using technology that will call you back if you're tired of holding. When a customer's hold time is more than a couple of minutes, the Concierge solution offers to hold customers' places in line and calls them back when it's their turn to speak to a Southwest Airlines agent.

The number of Southwest customers who buy their tickets over the phone has been steadily declining, however. Last year, nearly 78% of its passenger revenues came through its Southwest.com site. That's up from 54% five years earlier.

In another move to accommodate customers, the airline unveiled new policies last week that allow passengers to take pets on board and to let unaccompanied minors fly. Southwest services 65 cities in 33 states, with 3,300 flights a day.