Personality in Business: Southwest Airlines

It seems a lot of companies are afraid of personality. Many company websites, from a small business to a large corporation, read like styrofoam. Dry, stoic, functional but bland. Environmentalists have told you how bad styrofoam is for the earth. Well, content styrofoam is bad for your company environment.

Will content styrofoam bring your company to its knees? No. So it won’t kill you. But how is it helping you?

If your website is pretty bland with standard industry verbiage and long-winded text, it either means you are (a) a bland company or (b) has a website that really doesn’t reflect your company. Option (a) cannot be true, since every company was built from someone’s passion, a fire from deep within, and that’s always exciting. Go with option (b) and you’re selling yourself short.

It’s scary to stand up and announce your personality. It’s very personal and there is the risk of alienating people who don’t mesh with you. But when you do stand by your personality, you work more confidently, knowing you are yourself, and you attract people who respect all that you are. The naysayers who are scared of this honesty can go find another bland company to work with, while you celebrate each day with the people you want to meet.

Businesses tend to confuse personality with unprofessional. That is not the case. You can be both. Personality does not mean bold colors and jokes and all smiles, unless that is your personality. If you are a pretty mellow accountant, personality means relaying that there is a person behind the jargon and answering the fears that most people have in seeing an accountant. Personality is being human, and at the end of the day, in business and in everyday life, all people want is a human connection.

Southwest Airlines shows their personality through bold colors and jokes and all smiles. The flight attendants, as I mentioned yesterday, inject humor into humdrum airline speak. Their commercials are a bit irreverent. They focus on great customer service instead of extra food or charging for baggage. Their coffee cups say a lot about them:


Yes, I took a photo of the coffee cup, I liked it so much. They put time into designing an original cup that shares a glimpse into what Southwest is all about.

1. They put time into developing the thing you get for free.
They have a signature coffee blend, LIFT, as the cup tells me. Spaced along the top are adjectives to tell you more about the blend = “Mountain Grown,” “Freshly Brewed,” “Smooth.” You do not pay extra for great coffee - they just want you to have a great coffee experience. They are squashing the swill-on-airplanes stereotype.

2. They care about the environment.
True, an overplayed hot button of the time, but an important one nonetheless. The cup is 12% post consumer recycled fiber, as it says on the cup. This has nothing to do with your coffee experience but it is a nice added bonus. No styrofoam here! Why not tell others about the nice things you are doing?

3. They are community-minded.
They proudly donate to the Guatemala Light Project. Not enough room to detail what this is, they leave you with the sentiment: “Drink our coffee and LIFT others!”

4. They are proud to give you such a nice coffee experience.
The LIFT blend has its own logo. They did not just slap their normal Southwest logo on the cup and call it a day. This is special - you should feel special.

For a small spot of real estate, they explained a lot about themselves without gimmicks. Never before in my life have I taken a photo of an airline coffee cup. The personality of this cup made it stand out, made it memorable and obviously, even made me write about it. And that’s a coffee cup. Think of what you can do in your business to showcase your personality and seem more like a human. Make a real connection. Be styrofoam-free.