How Southwest Airlines is working with creators to sell plane tickets to Gen Z on TikTok

An audio clip of Tina Fey’s character in the sitcom “30 Rock” wistfully saying, “I want to go to there” has been circulating on TikTok for over two years. It’s typically used to indicate a person’s dream destination, whether jokingly (such as a dog daycare visible from one user’s office desk) or genuinely (a dreamy horse ranch at sunset, for instance). For creative agency GSD&M, the phrase doubled as a mantra that shaped the direction of its latest TikTok campaign for Southwest Airlines, Ani Munoz, a creative director at the agency, told Ad Age. The campaign, which leans into TikTok’s popularity as a search engine among Gen Z, enables TikTok users to book flights to destinations highlighted across a series of videos made by creators—all without ever exiting the platform. “The concept of being able to book a flight in the same way that we shop for creators’ candles, their T-shirts or their dresses and things like that—that evolution seemed inevitable [for travel]. It was just a matter of who was going to do it first,” Munoz said. “This wasn’t just a creative idea—it was a business solution.” Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Southwest and GSD&M, the airline’s agency of record, collaborated with TikTok to utilize a “book now” button to embed in sponsored videos from a group of 10 creators, effectively allowing viewers to quickly book a Southwest flight to one of the various cities featured in the creators’ content, Munoz said. Those destinations, which include Denver, Chicago, New Orleans, Cancún, Mexico, and Hawaii, are all priority markets for Southwest, said Julia Melle, director of brand and content at Southwest Airlines. The creators are rolling out their shoppable sponsored videos in three stages, Melle added. The first phase, featuring “Snowboard Jesus,” “The Hockey Guys” and Joshua Watson, aka JoshVFX, wrapped up earlier this month, and two additional flights of creator content will run between now and Oct. 13, she said. Southwest covered travel costs for the creators and GSD&M specifically requested the creators keep brand messaging in their videos to a minimum, as “we wanted that little button at the bottom to do all the work for us,” Munoz said. @joshvfx Wizards need magical vacations🧙♂️…book your flight through TikTok now! #southwestair #ad ♬ original sound - josh “We thought [this campaign] was a great opportunity to connect with our Gen Z audience, knowing that they’re going to TikTok to search for travel inspiration,” Melle said. “We wanted to be there at that moment—to be there as they’re searching for ideas—in a way that felt authentic to the platform.” More news: The top 5 brand TikToks to know about right now Brands such as Southwest are eager to win with Gen Z, whose eldest members are in their late 20s. Just under two-thirds (64%) of Gen Z consumers have leveraged TikTok as a search engine, and roughly 10% of them prefer TikTok to traditional search engines such as Google when seeking out information, according to a January survey of over 800 consumers conducted by Adobe. Among all of the survey respondents who reported having used TikTok as a search engine, 20% said they sought out information about “travel destinations or experiences,” specifically. “For Southwest, they were running into the problem of not being able to connect with Gen Z,” Munoz said. “And I think when we approached it, we said, ‘Let’s just go where they are.’ Going to where Gen Z is approaching this idea of travel inspiration on a platform and through the people that they love—it just makes sense, right?” @joshplaysdrums Visiting New Orleans changed my life. The music, the food, the people — there’s nothing like it! And now it’s extra easy to hit the Big Easy on @Southwest Airlines ! #neworleans #music #travel #ad ♬ original sound - Josh Harmon It’s a similar strategy to the one NBCUniversal employed to build a Gen Z audience for the Paris Olympics—putting TikTok videos and other content from the Summer Games in front of those viewers through the lens of over two dozen creators it invited to the Olympics, rather than attempting to persuade Gen Z to tune into an NBCU broadcast. Southwest has been increasingly honing in on Gen Z consumers through both TikTok and influencer partnerships over the past year, Melle said. In April, the airline worked with GSD&M and media agency Spark Foundry to launch its Gen Z-focused “Big Flex” campaign, which cast influencers such as gaming YouTuber Swagg (real name Kris Lamberson) and comedy creator Kelsey June Jensen in ads that ran across social media, streaming services, audio platforms and broadcast and cable TV. @southwestair The "pack hack" has entered the chat. That's a Big Flex. @swagg ♬ original sound - Southwest Airlines “There’s a whole new generation of fliers that are coming into the Southwest brand, and this is an opportunity for us to introduce our brand to them, our policies to them, in a way that resonates,” Melle said. “They are extremely important to the future of this brand … and we needed to reach them in a way that builds brand love and encourages purchases, as well.” Southwest’s efforts to expand its Gen Z customer base are likely one aspect of the airline’s longer-term transformational initiatives to help it drive the “meaningful” revenue and profit growth that Bob Jordan, president, CEO and vice chairman of the board, mentioned in the airline’s latest earnings release. Southwest’s second-quarter revenue grew 4.5% from a year earlier, but its profit fell 46%. On the same day that Southwest reported its results, the airline announced plans to pivot from its distinctive open-seating model—one Southwest had maintained for over 50 years—to the assigned seating structure used by most airlines. Southwest will also begin to offer premium seating options as part of the new model. The airline justified the change by citing internal research that indicates 80% of Southwest customers prefer assigned seating.

How Southwest Airlines is working with creators to sell plane tickets to Gen Z on TikTok

Featured Stories