OBJECTIVE: A Heineken.

ENVIRONMENT: A Southwest Airlines 737 going from Salt Lake City to Reno/Tahoe. Full flight. Early evening.

ROLES:  My friend Martin Gastanaga and a Southwest Airlines flight attendant.

RULES:  Normal commercial airline procedures apply (Martin’s not already drunk, he’s of legal drinking age, etc.)

SCENE: Martin asks for a Heineken.  The flight attendant hands him the beer.  He offers her a twenty.  She doesn’t have change.  Without hesitating, without missing a beat, she keeps wheeling her cart up the aisle and says,”This one’s on me.”

What a great gift that flight attendant gave on behalf of the Southwest brand! Think about it. How many of the typical things could she have said or done? “Give it to me and I’ll go get change.” “Can you see if your friend has change?” “I don’t have change, hold onto it and I’ll come back.” She could’ve gotten on the plane’s P.A. and asked if anyone had change. Any of these responses would have been perfectly reasonable and expected, but would not necessarily have been productive moves where the scene was concerned. In fact, when you factor in the time of the people involved, the imposition on players who aren’t in the scene and the zero-effect on brand equity, those moves could conceivably be unproductive and not even worth the margin Southwest gets on the sale of the beer.

But the flight attendant didn’t do any of that. Instead she gave a little gift that had big implications. Not the beer, the beer was not the gift, it was only a prop. The gift was friendliness. “This one’s on me” is something you say to a friend. It’s personal. By giving this little gift on behalf of Southwest, the flight attendant reminded Martin that the airline is a passenger-friendly brand.

With four simple words accompanied by an action — the zero-hesitation movement of the cart up the aisle — she touched on themes of the Southwest brand.

Notice she did not tell Martin that the drink was “on Southwest” or “on us.” She didn’t say “Don’t worry about it.” Those moves would have been less personal, less of a gift.

And notice that of all the moves she could have made, this one was the most economical. This too, was the flight attendant channeling the brand, and another way in which a little gift like this one gets big returns on the investment. It was a message to Martin and to all of us within earshot that Southwest makes things easy for its passengers. In so doing, she expands the meaning of “economy” communicating to her passenger that to Southwest, economy not only means low cost, it means ease of movement, too.

Finally, this little gem of a gift was a very effective “Yes and” statement. The attendant yessed the beer transaction and added her friendliness to it, further defining her character and her (and her organization’s) relationship with her scene partner. The friendliness of the exchange implies that not only is there an existing relationship between the players, but that the relationship will continue next time they encounter one another. The implication to Martin is that the next one is on him. Martin will continue to fly Southwest, and if he’s on a flight with that same attendant anytime soon, I guarantee you he’ll pay her back for the Heine. The cost to Southwest’s food services department of giving away the beer might very well turn out to be no cost at all.

I wish I had gotten this flight attendant’s name. She has some kind of genius going for her. And because of that, so does Southwest Airlines.

Southwest does an absolutely brilliant job of casting players with the ability to give gifts like this one in their scenes. It is no coincidence that as one of the most improvisational companies in America over the past 30 years, they have also been one of the most successful.

(THE UPDATE:  A couple of days after this was posted, I got an email from Brian Lusk, head of public relations for Southwest, asking me for the date of the flight on which the above scene took place.  My conversation with Lusk eventually led him to invite me to tour Southwest’s Dallas headquarters.  Two months later, I got an envelope in the mail from Lusk’s office.  It was the paper trail that led from Lusk, through several managers, to a commendation for the flight attendant and the crew that had worked the ‘Heineken flight.’  Imagine!  All that effort to honor a flight attendant who’d given away a beer!  Most companies only expend that kind of energy on an employee when they to fire her.  Bravo, Southwest!)

Tags: Branding, Brian Lusk, Communications, Energy, Flight Attendant, GameChangers, Gifts, Heineken, Marketing, Martin Gastanaga, Southwest Airlines, Yes And

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Gifts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.