The ads initially debuted in 1998 and ran for about a decade. One featured a guest snooping through her host’s bathroom medicine cabinet only to have the shelves fall in a cacophonous collapse. Another had a museum curator explaining the laborious art of “sand painting” before a member of his audience sneezed and ruined the piece.
The signature moment of the ads: A shot of the embarrassed culprit with a “Wanna Get Away?” voice-over as the carrier advertised fares from its discount fare category.
BOOKMARK: Go directly to the Today in the Sky homepage
It’s been almost a decade since those ads last aired, but they'll begin running again Tuesday in six markets. The campaign will make its national debut on NBC's Thursday night National Football League broadcast.
Bob Jordan, Southwest’s chief commercial officer, says it’s a good time to revive the campaign following the company's ongoing efforts to updat the look of everything from its airplanes and logo to its crew uniforms.
“This is a continuation of a two- to three-year journey we’ve been on to updat the brand,” Jordan says to Today in the Sky. “We’re celebrating our past and putting a little bit of a new look on the brand. We have updated the aircraft, in and out. We’ve updated the airports. We’ve been updating our employee uniforms. And now we’re taking a look at our advertising.”
The original Wanna Get Away campaign proved so popular after first airing in 1998 that Southwest stuck with it until 2008. In fact, “Wanna Get Away” is now the name for the category of Southwest’s lowest, advance-purchase fares.
The “Secret Identity” ad that kicks off the newest campaign on Tuesday features a familiar Wanna Getaway plot. It shows an undercover agent during a TV interview detailing how he broke up a notorious crime ring. The man is speaking with his voice and face obscured – until an intern enters the room with coffee for the crew and turns on the lights, unmasking the agent. Cue Southwest’s “Wanna Get Away” tagline.
"It’s very much in the spirit of what we did beginning in 1998,” Jordan says. "We’re bringing back the spots in a way you remember. People in funny, embarrassing, awkward, uncomfortable moments."
But Jordan adds “what we’re doing this time that we obviously didn’t do in 1998 is making this a full broad campaign” -- a reference to a big social media push that will accompany the re-launch of Wanna Get Away.
“There’ll be as much social conversation and activation as there would be through almost any other channel these days,” Jordan predicts about the modern incarnation of the Wanna Get Away ads. “I expect real high engagement.”
To play up its social media angle, Southwest is inviting its customers to share their own “Wanna Get Away” moments. It's all part of a contest that will give five winners a free February vacation to a private island in Belize.
The carrier, in a partnership with vacation rental site Homeaway, has secured a week at the island along Belize's Caribbean coast. The airline is dubbing it “Wanna Get Away” island for the contest, which runs through Oct. 6.
To enter, Southwest is inviting people to share their embarrassing tales via Twitter, Instagram or Facebook along with the hashtags “#wannagetaway” and “#contest.” The airline says five grand prize winners will be announced by Nov. 1. (Check out the full fine print.)
The contest, of course, gives Southwest a chance to make a splash with the revival of its popular brand of ads. But – by offering a trip to Belize as the grand prize – it also gives the carrier a chance to tout something else it didn’t have during the last Wanna Get Away campaign: international flights.
Southwest flew its first international flight with its own planes in 2014, launching service to several destinations in the Caribbean. The airline has since expanded its international footprint, adding new destinations in both the Caribbean and in Mexico, Costa Rica and Belize.
"By the way, we fly to Belize,” Jordan joked, tipping his hat about another objective of the Wanna Get Away contest. “We might be trying to illustrate our new international destinations as well.”
