Marketing BS: Southwest Convenience
"Marketing" that really matters
From the WSJ two weeks ago: Southwest is experimenting to speed up the boarding process.
Some of the things they are doing:
Removing ads from the jet bridge, and replacing them with “travel tips” for boarding faster
A time-and-motion study in Atlanta to understand passenger behavior
Bigger over-head bins
Possibly boarding the planes from the front and back simultaneously
Paperless takeoff documents
Group chat between workers at the gate, on the plane, and on the ground
Roving employee with a mobile device to check oversized bags and register pets before boarding begins
Multiple video screens near the gate displaying boarding countdown, alerts for important announcements and flashing lights when boarding begins
Portable speakers that play “uptempo music”
Staging area for families and those with disabilities (including changing carpet colors for each area)
The goal is to reduce boarding times by five-minutes per flight. If successful this is a win/win/win. It saves time for passengers, it allows Southwest to turn around planes faster, and it reduces congestion at airports. All of these effects are going to be minor. Current turnaround time for Southwest is 40 minutes. So if successful this would be a 12% improvement in turn-around and roughly a 25% improvement in boarding time. But that is what incremental improvement looks like.
Quote from Southwest’s COO: “If you can collect up enough of these minutes in each turn, then you can start to squeeze out some more flying”
Note that it is the COO, not the CMO, that is overseeing the initiative. That is not surprising, but it is stuff like this that CMOs should at least be thinking about.
Keep it simple,
Edward