Hearts & Minds: Elliott’s air wars

The move by Elliott Management to use podcasts in its struggle to exact leadership change at Southwest Airlines has raised the bar in corporate comms. Long feared for its frequently aggressive approach, Elliott unveiled a new weapon with “Stronger Southwest”, a series of conversations with the activist fund’s nominees for the US airline’s board.

The battle between fund and airline is settled for now. While it lasted, investors could hear from their nominees in person, before a key shareholder vote. The first episode, lasting 18 minutes, featured nominee Gregg Saretsky, an airline industry veteran. Saretsky, a former CEO of Westjet and v-p marketing at Canadian Airlines, declared: “The things we had to do in those days, with respect to taking a deep dive and looking really critically at aspects of our business, I think are things that very much need to happen today at Southwest.” It was available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple.

Stronger Southwest is believed to be the first occasion this tactic has been deployed. It joined other  Elliott comms weapons aimed at Southwest investors, including a 51-page digital presentation and social media posts on Instagram, X and Facebook.

The podcast is a clever ruse. It allowed the fund to engage with small shareholders and the airline’s current employees directly and ahead of that key vote. For their part, they could listen to the claims while driving or walking or working out in the gym. Elliott could break down its complex demands to unchallenged, simply understood, impactful messaging.

Not for nothing are podcasts growing in popularity. There’s no need for a screen or hard copy; the  accessible, on demand experience they offer is direct and immersive.

Having tried it on this occasion, Elliott and other media-savvy activists will doubtless add the podcast to their arsenals. Corporates, often hesitant to put their staff and directors so publicly on the front line, will have to respond in kind. They must fight with fire. It will be expected and to not do so, will only make them appear slow and behind the curve - an image that may well play to the activist call for a shake-up.

CEOs and their comms teams should begin preparing now, setting up the technology, training their likely subjects. When the activist strikes, they will have little leeway in which to hit back, at what could be a volley of podcasts fired in their direction.

The new medium, favoured by celebrities and politicians, has been elevated to essential corporate comms tool.

Chris Blackhurst is one of the UK’s foremost business journalists. He was previously Editor of The Independent and City Editor of the Evening Standard.