My heart goes out to Southwest

When I heard the news this morning on NPR that a 6 year old boy was killed when an airplane slid off a runway in Chicago, I immediately felt sorrow for the boy and his family. When they later mentioned it was a Southwest airplane, my heart sank again and I felt sorry for Southwest and all the Southwest employees. Why did I feel for Southwest? I would not have had the same reaction if it was say United or Northwest. Why was that?

It was because I knew Southwest. I could put a face on Southwest, Southwest represented a group if caring employees that have personalized their company and their brand. Through my experiences flying w/ them, to reading about them in business press, on blogs, and watching them on the A&E show 'Airline', I've gotten to know them at an emotional level and the news that they were involved in such a tragedy made me feel deep sympathy for them. I also envisioned a very personal response to the family and all the injured people on the ground regardless of who was at fault and that all their employees felt some sorrow when they heard about what happened. That is a powerful brand, one that is authentic and personal.

UPDATE: Read Southwest's heartfelt press release on the incident.

The other thing that struck me were my thoughts about JetBlue. I asked myself, "would I have felt the same empathy towards JetBlue?" I love flying JetBlue, I read about them and I think the they are better than Southwest in many ways. However, I don't really 'know' JetBlue. They don't seem to have that personal identity. So if JetBlue was involved, I would not have felt for the company and its employees as deeply as I did for Southwest. I'm not implying other companies wouldn't react sympathetically to a terrible incident such as this, I'm only trying to point out my reaction and the indication that emotions do matter and creating a company w/ soul and personality that can be experienced by consumers is the only was to establish those bonds that lead to loyalty and preference.

So how do you design experiences that create those personal bonds? If you’re an online service and don’t have face time like Southwest, how do you establish a personality? How can you get your customers to say, "I know company x" like they describe their best friend?