Near-sighted, Impersonal and Customer-Hostile Is No Way to Go Through Life
Over the holidays, I ran across an article about a campaign that Yahoo! was running to pay baggage fees for passengers out of the Bay area. While Southwest's Bags Fly Free and the We Love Your Bags ads hit the nails on the head about this openly hostile customer experience, Southwest is a competitor. It makes sense that they would ding the other airlines for this backward policy because they stand to benefit directly from people realizing Southwest treats their customers and their baggage more sensibly.
What I love about Yahoo!'s campaign is that they have very little to gain from this other than a slight brand lift. They aren't competing with American . . . at all. They're just using an obviously backward customer experience to accentuate a better one that they offer, albeit in a totally different arena: the web.
From the article:
Yahoo, as part of its holiday giving program, will pay for your baggage fees if you're traveling from San Francisco International or San Jose International airports. They'll be there on Dec. 23, traditionally one of the busiest travel days of the year. Not a bad deal for travelers, who likely booked --and payed for -- their tickets, only to learn that they'd have to cough up a bit more dough for the privilege of actually traveling with luggage.
So riddle me this: how customer-hostile must your business practice be that a company that is not directly competing with you builds a portion of their marketing campaign around your practices. Shouldn't this send a clear message to the offending airlines that maybe they should reconsider this model? I mean, your other company friends are feeling sorry for your customers. Is that any way to go through business life? Being a customer bully? Do you really want to be the poster child for bad customer experience?
Now, back to Southwest Airlines and a more traditional competitor-on-competitor marketing attack. How great would it be if Southwest pulled this same stunt. What if Southwest had folks standing at the American Airlines ticketing counter and each time an American passenger had to pay a baggage fee, the Southwest rep would hand over $25 to that customer with a little remark like "Here, let me get that for you. And next time you book a flight, remember we understand that there's no sense in you traveling somewhere with no bags. When you fly on Southwest, your bags fly free."
I'm sure that's violating some airport turf code (i.e. "You no-good Southwest agents stay away from our ticketing counters or we'll call the cops!") or something, but what an incredibly impactful message delivered at the precise moment of customer pain (paying the fee). Memorable and relatively cheap. Now that's a great marketing campaign.
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