Southwest Airlines’ Sabrina Callahan plans to revive the brand’s ‘maverick spirit’

Sabrina Callahan, who joined Southwest Airlines in February to run both marketing and digital, wants to bring back the “maverick spirit” that once defined the carrier’s brand.

It is the first time Southwest has combined the two functions, and Callahan said she believes no other airline has done it before. Speaking at Advertising Week New York, she said the aim was to join up the marketing funnel with the digital tools customers rely on when they shop, book, check in and fly.

Marketing usually builds the brand and generates demand, while ecommerce and digital teams handle what happens once a customer reaches the website or app. Callahan’s role removes that handover.

“A lot of times, those teams are left almost at the mercy of, ‘here they are, and please don’t mess it up,’” she said.

Overseeing everything from advertising to conversion and customer experience, she wants customers to feel they are dealing with a single brand, not “talking to an org chart.”

Looking back to move forward

Callahan arrived as Southwest was coming out of a period of major change, including the introduction of assigned seating. “My job became, how do you take what made this brand so iconic and so special, and you don’t lose that, and you figure out a way to bring it forward,” she said.

Much of her time since joining has been spent in the company’s archives, reviewing customer research, speaking to staff and studying the founders’ philosophy. She described the brand of the past as “a little bit rebel with a cause, mixed with playful and fun and funny and witty and warm and full of love.”

She believes that heritage gives her licence to take more risks, which led her to bring Foundation Media Partners on to the airline’s roster of agencies under a multi-year deal signed a few months ago.

Callahan remembered the company from her Walmart days as the team to call “when you had some crazy idea and you needed connections,” describing it as a “600lb gorilla in Hollywood.”

“It is also not an agency. It is almost an entertainment team that has those tie-ins. It knows that world of entertainment and it wants to have fun,” she said.

Entertainment and attention

Foundation will sit alongside Southwest’s existing agencies, tasked with finding ways for the airline to treat entertainment more seriously. The airline already has form here: for around 15 years its Live at 35 programme has put musicians on flights to play for unsuspecting passengers.

Callahan wants more moments like that, drawing on entertainment, talent and cultural partners to build customer experiences. She questions whether traditional advertising alone can still win enough attention.

“You’re not necessarily competing with the other airlines. You’re competing in front of every brand that’s trying to get in front of a consumer,” she said. “It is how you actually create a moment that’s additive but part of something that they’re already doing and absorbing.”

Her first major campaign, ‘Enter Airplane Mode’, launched on 5 October. Created by GSD&M, it urges burnt-out Americans to put down their devices and take a trip, recasting someone’s “breaking point” as their “booking point”.

Callahan said awareness is not Southwest’s problem. Her focus is on raising consideration and affinity and turning them into bookings, revenue and repeat customers.

“I think I’m always positioning with the lens of growth,” she said. “You’re talking about revenue growth, but ultimately that comes off the back of customer growth.”

“The point of it is to get it in front of more customers to be able to showcase the great value and experience and everything Southwest has to offer.”