Gung Hay Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year! Southwest Airlines is once again the title sponsor of the San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade in this Year of Hare. To celebrate its 40th Birthday, Southwest Airlines is staging one of the most lavish Parade floats ever with all things Lunar New Year including dozens of intricately carved New Year figurines, countless popping firecrackers, pinwheels, fans, a myriad of lucky symbols and blossoms, lions, and dragons.
Named one of the top ten parades by the International Festivals and Events Association, the Southwest Airlines Chinese Parade in San Francisco is one of the few remaining illuminated parades in the country. Started in the 1860’s by the Chinese in San Francisco as a means to educate the community about their culture, the Parade and Festival has grown to be the largest celebration of Asian culture outside Asia. To see the schedule of events, please visit www.chineseparade.com.
Also, to promote the celebration all year long, Southwest Airlines Chinese New Year calendar was produced specifically for Lunar New Year Parade. This is a practice started in Asia in late 80’s. Major companies (both foreign and local) in banking, airline and retail industries will give out branded calendars and red envelopes near the end of the year as a customer retention tool, in a way, to say “thank you” to their Customers for their support during the year and provide well-wishing messages for the coming year. What makes it more recommendable for the Asian market though is that custom-made “Asian” calendars can include lunar-calendar dates which many Asians want and need to refer to. For this reason, Asian consumers particularly like to get an Asian calendar which gives them information they need and has a nice, culturally-appealing design. In fact, for the past few years, companies such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America have made break-through calendar designs and have created “talk” value in the Asian communities.
And this year is no exception – we’re excited to gift this year’s calendar to our business partners and friends in the Bay Area. Asian culture places high emphasis on Character, Tradition and Reliability, so this year’s theme brings all those together by focusing on these things found in nature. Check out the beautiful artwork depicting the seasons and nature and we hope you enjoy our message as much as we enjoyed producing it. “Southwest Airlines, Reliability is our nature.”